Seed files backed up on a flash disk and/or harddisk storage partition. Having it on both is better. On this install, I simplified my understanding of needed files, and which settings I had stored which weren't essential. Instead of having them all in separate subdirectories, I can have them all in one directory with additional prefixes or suffixes, then figure out where they go later, when I need them.
/etc/rc.conf and
/boot/loader.conf go a long way. Then, custom config files in home directories. Crontab files, KERNCONF, and
make.conf, if there are any, as well. A lot of old arguments that I had on my old configuration options are obsolete. I can figure out which kinds of settings I really needed.
Source files use dots "." as placeholders for additional directories, which automated scripts translate to the needed slashes "/" and subdirectories. This can be seen in
/usr/src/ (if you have it) in reference of bin and sbin.
are you gonna go through the entire process of re-acquiring LibreOffice for FreeBSD 11-RELEASE by taking your chances that the correct versions are still available in public git repos?
A program like that from a dedicated organization will always be there. When that goes away, there will be news about that. Then, some other organization will pick it up, because its license allows it. If a program did become defunct upstream, it would still need security updates from somewhere. If any version is always available, then it should work, or it should work with a production version of FreeBSD anyway. If a repo changes, maintainers and other users of it will address that and try to fix it. I'm not sure if I understood you on this.
edit: in reference to opensource, as LibreOffice is.