Debian has exceptions too; for eg all mainstream browsers come with feature upgrades too, even in LTS/stable.

Browsers are some of the worst offenders in terms of pushing pointless feature upgrades. It's ironic because the web is supposed to be this backwards-compatible thing but browsers themselves will add and remove features and change their UI for no reason.

Yes, I remember that discussion at Ubuntu/Debian, where they had to accept those terms in order to keep the name "Firefox" in (remember things like Iceweasel?)