As a practical example, if
Fedora prefers stability for application packages over early
updates, I'd like to use Thunderbird as an example because the
upstream vendor supports two releases concurrently for a
predictable period of ~ 12 weeks.
Thunderbird update policy:
Thunderbird releases follow the Mozilla ESR calendar [1]
relatively closely. Each stable release series is supported for a
little over a year, and each release lifecycle overlaps with the
subsequent release for at least 12 weeks to allow users a
transition period that provides time to test and adapt to breaking
API changes.
For Fedora releases, Thunderbird should rebase to a new stable
release in Rawhide as early as possible, while stable Fedora
releases should remain on the old stable series for as long as
possible.
Firefox ESR releases occur every four weeks (five in some cases),
on Tuesday, and Thunderbird will release shortly thereafter. The
release cadence makes package maintenance fairly predictable.
Roughly every four weeks, the newest release [2] should be built
in Rawhide, and in any branched but not yet final Fedora release.
If that release is a new release series, a self-contained change
announcement should be added to the upcoming Fedora release
proposals, possibly referring to the changes documented in the
webextension API guide [3].
If there was also a release from the previous release series, that
release should also be built in each active Fedora release.
However, if there was no release from a prior release series, then
the newest release should also be built in each active Fedora
release.
1:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar
2:
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/releases/
3:
https://webextension-api.thunderbird.net/en/latest/index.html