1. People are building a next version of the distro anyway. Even if you want stable, you don't want 80ies stable. 2. Is making a new release really more work?

1. People are building a next version of the distro anyway. Even if you want stable, you don't want 80ies stable. 2. Is making a new release really more work? Most parts of a distro come from upstream, so their development too. I don't think most tools have stable branches, you're just expected to upgrade. Backporting security fixes is then actually more work than simply updating and solving breakage every now and then.