Last Question On Which Release Is Best For Production

[Michael G. Goodell]

First of all, Thank you to those who replied to my original post about which
FreeBSD Release is the most stable for a production system. I would still
like to ask for clarification on one last item.

Almost invariably the reply to my post asking which FreeBSD release is *the*
most stable for a production environment was 4.10 is *the* best choice for a
production system and that I could wait for 5.3 to become marked as STABLE
in the coming months. I assume this information is taken from:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/index.html that shows 5.2.1 and 4.10 as the
two releases.

My question is this: I currently run 5.1 (uname -a yields: 5.1-RELEASE-p17)
and I read at the page http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html it states
that 5.1 is Frozen and also states (not officially supported) - Does this
mean that I am using a release that is not supported at all any longer and I
should upgrade to 5.3 or will my 5.1 release still have security patches and
such applied to it and eventually become production worthy. Am I just
missing out on functionality by sticking with 5.1 and not moving up to 5.3?
Moreover, *if* I choose to move to 5.3 (when it is ready for prime time) can
I change my cvsupfile and then rebuild my kernel and world to the new 5.3
release?

Thanks,

Michael