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Isn't that like a security patch?
Security patches and errata updates. The criterion I set down when I was security officer for what would go into this was "people should be able to install these blindly without ever worrying that it will break anything".
I believe these are the major problems of FreeBSD: no minor releases to give users fixes from STABLE or HEAD, no packages for the base system to make update installation trivial, TCP and networking stacks lag behind those found in modern Linux kernels, many features lag behind those found in Linux, pf lags behind OpenBSD's pf, some tools and problems haven't changed in years, bhyve isn't production ready, CAM target is a toy when compared to what COMSTAR is providing for iSCSI and SRP (no LUN masking, per-port configuration or initiator grouping), jails are no match for Solaris zones.

PC-bsd, pfsense and freenas use patches from STABLE and HEAD to get things done, they can't use unpatched FreeBSD because it's not meeting their needs.

You seem to be working on 8.5, 9.4 or 10.2 and the others don't see a release until you're done with the one you're focusing on.

I'm using 9.3 right now. I had to wait until you were done with 10.1, hoping FreeBSD 9.4 will be next.

There's no way to plan anything around FreeBSD's release or development process. There's no telling if your new FreeBSD version is going to be stable or not, a driver from STABLE might be more stable than the same driver from RELEASE.

Many live systems are lagging behind with FreeBSD updates because updating those systems can lead to extended downtime due to potential bugs in drivers or a potential breakage caused by the merging of conf files.

no minor releases to give users fixes from STABLE or HEAD

Err... that's exactly what 10.1 is.

8-14 months between any significant update for the particular FreeBSD you're running is too much. Severe bugs get fixed only in a release, not in your patches.

It's ok, we can agree to disagree.

8-14 months for bugfixes to what exactly? All the serious packages you use in most servers are installed via packages/ports. What's actually in the base system that isn't (a) also in ports or (b) needs upgrades more frequent than to as frequent as Fedora (which is 6 months btw).
So... don't apply any OpenSSL patches? :)
We never accepted OpenSSL patches into our tree without looking at them very carefully. At least 50% of the time we would end up committing a different patch because OpenSSL had either introduced new bugs or had failed to fix the reported vulnerability.
This is why Ubuntu and other Linux distributions are still better. They actually get bugs fixed.

I sometimes have to patch the sources with change sets from HEAD or STABLE to get bug fixes.

Interesting, my experience with Ubuntu (2007-2010) was that each time I run update it simply replaced old bugs with new ones.
What are you talking about? FreeBSD ships fixes for errata and security issues.
nope. only sec patches are applied. Updates are infrequent.

qlogic drivers had bugs in 10.0 which crash the system. Fully updated 10.0 is still affected.

And now we have 10.1. You're speaking nonsense.
I'm most certainly not, miss/mister.

The point holds for 10.1. A bug in 10.1 will only be fixed in 10.2.

Of course things get fixed. And they don't bring the system down like they do in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.
Perhaps you could also take a quick look at my other reply regarding qlogic.

My system is still crashing consistently with a fully updated 10.0.

It's only a question of time before I find something which crashes 10.1.

> And they don't bring the system down like they do in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.

They don't bring the system down in Linux, either. Stop spreading FUD.

No, they're right. Linux systems don't panic because of broken drivers after an update, they keep running properly.

FreeBSD sometimes completely stops booting on your hardware or turns unstable for no good reason. (search on google for posts from people who can't boot FreeBSD 8.x on hardware which was running 6.x or 7.x without the slightest bug)

FreeBSD can crash your system because of an unstable driver after a major upgrade like 9.2 to 9.3.

You can see they're right, "FreeBSD doesn't take your system down like Linux", it's much worse.