Since the announcement that the Project was no longer maintaining -stable packages due to resource constraints
(17 archs X 4400+ ports = 74800+ packages), the impact of updating -stable packages, and how to manage them, has been a regular, ongoing discussion on the misc@ and ports@ mailing lists. Some have volunteered limited resources, some have argued methodologies, some have tested various techniques. This discussion continues in contemporary threads there. To date, no formal decision to reinstate the practice has been decided.
Feel free to join in, just be sure to read the archives first if you don't want your head handed to you. And it may be handed to you anyway, if you are unfamiliar with the prevailing cultural netiquette of the OpenBSD mailing lists.
Keep these things in mind:
- We are not OpenBSD Project members, here. Nothing said on this forum will influence Project policy.
- The goals of the Project do not include users, except for public access to source code. See www.openbsd.org/goals.html. The Project exists by and for its members: the ~90 developers. Any benefits we users receive are because of their efforts for themselves.
- The project funding efforts include -releases. But these efforts are to provide financial support of goals, not the other way around.
- The project develops and tests new function on -current, and that is where all developers (and many users) live. They build (and test) patches for -release and -release minus one only when the patch is deemed necessary, and where the scope of the change permits it. The patches are added to -stable, and if important enough, to the errata web pages.