Comment 5 for bug 2028420

> and therefore we agreed to regularly backport those to the latest LTS.

Who is this agreement between? Nothing is documented on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates, it doesn't appear to be an agreement involving the SRU Team.

Looking at the prior publishing history of open-vm-tools, we have jumped in jammy from 2:11.3.5-1ubuntu4 to 2:12.1.5-3~ubuntu0.22.04.4 so there is clearly precedent for significant version jumps in this package. However, the first such jump, LP: #1975767, refers to this as an "MRE" which stands for "micro-release exception" and this was clearly not a micro-release to move from 11.3.5 to 12.1.0 upstream.

You reference https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates#Other_safe_cases in this current bug report, but I don't see how this fits as being a "safe" update for hardware enablement. I think a closer examination here is warranted, and a documented exception with clarity about what guardrails exist to ensure these updates are "safe".