FreeBSD's packages being so up to date is literally one of the reasons I switched to it from Debian.
I don't understand this change, nor why it's the default. Actually having up-to-date packages was one of BSD's biggest selling points. Sick of distros with package systems so out-of-date they might as well not exist.
Some organizations value stability over new features, which is why you see so many places using distros like debian stable, centos, etc. It may not fit your needs, but there are plenty of use cases for preferring stability and security over new features.
There are advantages, yes, not denying that, but it seems vanishingly rare to find a packaging system that doesn't have this problem, and that's frustrating in particular for a programmer when almost every single language you use doesn't have an up-to-date package and winds up requiring an external install that then isn't even necessarily version tracked.
And I do wonder at the security implications of that. Some of the more popular languages like Python get semi-regular security updates even on stable branches like Debian's, but then I see stuff like Racket still being on 5.2 which came out in 2011 and I have to wonder how that affects the security profile if some "stable" package you've installed is depending on a scripting language package that still has a vulnerability in it because the package in "stable" hasn't been updated in half a decade.
To my understanding, one package set is built from the head of ports; that's been the default till now. Every quarter they create a new branch from the head, give it a little time (weeks?) to shake out the bugs, and build the quarterly package set from that; this will be the new default.
I've been using the quarterly package set for some time now to avoid the occasional breakage I saw on the latest package set. Having three-month-old software is a totally worthwhile trade off for me.
There's no reason I know of that you couldn't switch back to the latest package set and keep building your ports from the head of the tree.
AFAIK portsnap has no concept of pulling from anything other than HEAD when updating the tree. You have to explicitly ask for quarterly via cvsup, if you only want quarterly release ports.
I don't understand this change, nor why it's the default. Actually having up-to-date packages was one of BSD's biggest selling points. Sick of distros with package systems so out-of-date they might as well not exist.