I’ll just give my two cents here:
While working with some end users that were not part of VFX platform following studios, the lagging python version of the VFX platform did put up some roadblocks as these “security updates only” python versions are usually not available for download on Windows (at least from the official python website). From what I can tell most up to date Linux distros also drop these quickly in favor of currently actively bugfixed versions.
This meant that they couldn’t really get the same python version Blender uses easily installed and deployed on their Windows/Linux setups.
From my point of view, usually the larger studios that follow the vfx platform has a tight grip on their pipeline. So I would expect these places to be able to compile and deploy Blender with the library versions they want to have. This is harder for smaller studios or individuals.
So the power balance here seems a bit lopsided to me where we are catering to organizations that should have the resources to solve these issues themselves.
Of course I’m not saying that we should go full bleeding edge mode. But I think we could probably be a bit more lose in exactly following the VFX platform, and still accepting patches/reports from studios that use this for their pipeline. (Kinda like we currently do for reports/PRs from Arch/Debian users about ffmpeg versions etc). When or if we deviate that is.