There is no need for the branch to be called "master" for the workflow to work. HEAD points to 8.1, so this is what you get if you clone without specifying a branch.
Sure, but what's the point of these in-between unstable versions really? Isn't it just a legacy workflow inherited from the CVS days?
If somebody's developing a new feature on the 8.1 branch, and 8.1 becomes 8.2, where do they push their commits? Sure, 8.2 can be forked to 8.3, but then people would need to rename branches locally, rebase their feature branches and whatnot. If feature development could always be based on a single, non-renaming, development branch, wouldn't that reduce hassle?
(Admittedly, branches aren't renamed that often, but still -- we're engineers, why not reduce unnecessary work where possible? ;) )