The base OS and the installed 3rd party software (ports/packages) are on different release models. The base is either stable/LTS (~5 years support) or rolling

The base OS and the installed 3rd party software (ports/packages) are on different release models. The base is either stable/LTS (~5 years support) or rolling if you track -CURRENT. For the 3rd party software it is either rolling or stable in short lived quarterly branches. Most server side software is usually pretty up to date but some desktop-related tools can be outdated for a while. You might want to take a look at [0] and especially at the commit history of some fairly popular desktops like Gnome3 [1] or KDE5 [2]. They got updated recently but it took quite a while. [0] https://www.freshports.org/ https://www.freshports.org/ [1] https://www.freshports.org/x11/gnome3/ https://www.freshports.org/x11/gnome3/ [2] https://www.freshports.org/x11/kde5/ https://www.freshports.org/x11/kde5/