FWIW, here is most of the announcement from FreeBSD's Release Engineering Lead, Colin Percival. Notice that support won't <i>actually</i> get shorter until ~December of 2029:<p>> 1. FreeBSD stable branch support durations, starting with FreeBSD 15.x, are
being reduced from 5 years to 4 years after the .0 release.<p>> 2. A predictable schedule of releases is being established, with a new minor
release from one of the supported stable branches occurring most quarters.<p>> More background:<p>[...]<p>> 5. Having a .0 release every 2 years works well from a development perspective
(considering things like new features which can't be MFCed) but the security
and ports teams can't practically manage more than 2 stable branches at once;
so a 4 year support duration is more feasible than a 5 year support duration.<p>> Based on this, the FreeBSD core team has approved reducing the stable branch
support duration from 5 years to 4 years starting with FreeBSD 15 (the support
duration for individual point releases will remain until "next point release +
3 months", although that will now be more predictable) and I have put together
a schedule for upcoming releases:<p><pre><code> Release EoL
13.3: Mar 2024 Dec 2024
14.1: Jun 2024 Mar 2025
13.4: Sep 2024 Jun 2025
14.2: Dec 2024 Sep 2025
13.5: Mar 2025 Apr 2026*
14.3: Jun 2025 Jun 2026
15.0: Dec 2025 Sep 2026
14.4: Mar 2026 Dec 2026
15.1: Jun 2026 Mar 2027
14.5: Sep 2026 Jun 2027
15.2: Dec 2026 Sep 2027
14.6: Mar 2027 Nov 2028*
15.3: Jun 2027 Jun 2028
16.0: Dec 2027 Sep 2028
15.4: Mar 2028 Dec 2028
16.1: Jun 2028 Mar 2029
15.5: Sep 2028 Jun 2029
16.2: Dec 2028 Sep 2029
15.6: Mar 2029 Dec 2029
16.3: Jun 2029 Jun 2030
17.0: Dec 2029 Sep 2030
* 13.5 and 14.6 are supported until 5 years after 13.0 and 14.0 respectively.</code></pre>