>> Things like apache, mysql, etc etc etc. That's well beyond the remit of the OS developers who are only responsible for FreeBSD, but the ports team has happi

>> Things like apache, mysql, etc etc etc. That's well beyond the remit of the OS developers who are only responsible for FreeBSD, but the ports team has happily provided us with `pkg lock` to prevent edits to ports once they are installed. >> my understanding is the ports system only supports the lastest version of FreeBSD I believe the the ports tree will be compiled for a given branch until the underlying branch is EOL. FreeBSD 8, for example, had binary packages built from 2009(?) until the branch was EOL'd last year. That's six years of support for 3rd party software, after which you can maintain/build your own pkg repository. I understand the desire for longer environment lifecycles in FreeBSD (I hate the continuous upgrade cycle myself), but without a company stepping up and providing long term commercial support, I'm not seeing how a volunteer project as small as FreeBSD can do more for longer.