If we speaking in terms of upgrading Ubuntu to 16.10, it makes sense whether you desire to have latest version of DE-specific applications e.g. Nautilus (updated to 3.20), xfce-terminal (was ported to GTK3 [1]) or obviously a whole DE like GNOME [2] or XFCE [3]. Personally, I am going to stick with 16.04 too.

[1]: https://xubuntu.org/news/xubuntu-16-10-release/

[2]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuGNOME

[3]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/FinalRelease/Xubuntu

Sticking to the 16.04 LTS is the expected choice for the vast majority of users.

I will be downgrading to 14.04 due to bad hardware issues with the newer releases; there are big reports with many angry users, but ubuntu doesn't appear to find AMD mobile graphics and Broadcom to be a priority.

I'm very close to doing the same. I haven't been able to get lightworks to work on ubuntu with my AMD card since the update to 16.04.

What I want is something between LTS and the regular releases, let's call it LTS+.

This would be a model where specifically designated software is always kept up to the latest versions (primarily for : ssh, openssl, browsers.

That is simply LTS afaik. Ubuntu updates Firefox. Chrome has its own PPA anyways.

Why ssh and openssl? Security patches are backported.

For other specific applications, I use PPAs.

What he want is a solution that updates the packages he happens to want while backporting fixes to everything else (until he wants an update to the latest version). Of course, that's what everybody wants!

Unfortunaly it's impossible to deliver unless you pay people to do the work or do it yourself.

Yes. I think LTS+PPAs provides exactly that.

I would never use a .10 release personally. I only run the LTS versions.