This article, while mostly click-baiting troll fodder, does raise a reasonable point.

The release notes for OS X Mavericks list a large number of security issues which are resolved in 10.9 only. A month on from the release of Mavericks no equivalent updates have been posted for Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion. Absent official comment from Apple it seems that since the update to Mavericks is free, that’s your security patch.

Given the problems that come with any major system update this seems an utterly unreasonable approach, especially for cases where we’re dealing with complex third-party software which needs to be validated on each update. It’s bad enough that new Macs can never have older versions of the OS installed on them, but this is affecting machines which are currently running properly and now one has to choose between security and application stability. I’m at a loss to suggest the less bad option. Various applications require new versions to work on Mavericks, and not all of these updates are free.

This also absolutely reinforces my relief that I am no longer using OS X Server for anything apart from an illustration of why Linux or even Windows is a better server OS…