I'd start by noting all software adds features and code on a near-daily basis. (* modulo weekends and holidays and lack of interest in further development)

I'm not sure comparing to Linux kernel sheds light: what is different? Just Ubuntu/Red Hat LTS type stuff? What does LTS mean in the context of not-support-contracts and not-operating systems?

Steelmaning, I could say we mean....named branches? I guess a branch isn't a necessary condition...named versions?...that get fixes backported, but no new features.

Software where that's a commonly used approach are at least ~3 OOMs larger (i.e. are much more separable in terms of bug fixes vs. features and components) and hard to upgrade, i.e. it's hard for IT to force all N changes on end users since the last time they upgraded Linux machines, just to get a 0 day fix.

Here, it's a FOSS software library that needs to be part of an app to be useful, the consumers of the library are the ones would want to offer LTS.

I'm all ears if you dig up more info on a rollback or similar nasty scandal, but as it stands, I've been involved with it near-daily for 2 years now, including CI tests on every platform you can think of, and I've never, ever, heard of such a thing.

A guiding light here may be that Ollama inference is 99% llama.cpp or its consituents. From there, we notice a contradiction: if thats the case, how can we claim Ollama fulfills these ideas but llama.cpp doesn't? We could wave it away as they have a miraculous nose for what parts of llama.cpp won't fall victim to the issues we're worried about, but...well, here's one of my favorite quotes: "When faced with a contradiction, first, check your premises"