A CDN *cache* server is a special case. Netflix cache appliances can accept the risk of running FreeBSD -CURRENT and upgrading half their fleet to the latest snapshot every ~2 weeks and we thank them for battle testing FreeBSD's active development branch in production. It really helps to reveal regressions (both correctness and performance) early in the subsystems and drivers that matter to their usecase.
Most users will neither be willing nor able to accept the trade-offs that Netflix chose.
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I have thousands of CDN servers that would disagree with you.
https://people.freebsd.org/~gallatin/talks/OpenFest2023.pdf
Netflix is just a single point. I'd never run current in production.
It may be more common than you think. The latest version of pfSense CE is on 16.0-CURRENT.
PFsense gleefully ships vulnerable code to their own customers. They are an even worse data point
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-lice...
A CDN *cache* server is a special case. Netflix cache appliances can accept the risk of running FreeBSD -CURRENT and upgrading half their fleet to the latest snapshot every ~2 weeks and we thank them for battle testing FreeBSD's active development branch in production. It really helps to reveal regressions (both correctness and performance) early in the subsystems and drivers that matter to their usecase.
Most users will neither be willing nor able to accept the trade-offs that Netflix chose.
-CURRENT is great for cattle. For pets, I recommend -RELEASE.