Debian is nice in some ways and it's really great that stable lives up to its name, but I am sad that Debian has such old software for so long.
Jason, I know it's frustrating, but please understand where we're coming from. There are a number of servers that support our research. The important thing to understand is that nobody is paid full-time to maintain these servers. For example, in our lab, the production servers are maintained by one technician that has a number of other machines in charge, the server for experimental stuff is maintained by myself and one postdoc in our copious free time. As far as the server I'm in charge of is concerned, we apply security patches in a timely manner, and we try to check the logs on a weekly basis. Other than that, we avoid touching it. Once every two years, usually in August, we move it from oldstable (head - 2) to stable (head - 1). We then spend a couple of weeks reading the logs daily and ironing out any remaining issues. (The production servers are managed even more conservatively, the DNS server has only just switched to stable, the web/SMTP server is still running oldstable.) So please understand that it's not a matter of Debian or no Debian. If we were to upgrade my server more than once in two years, I would need to find funding for a technician. Juliusz