I'm more getting at, will every binary on the system including your own have to be recompiled when pam comes out?

No, I don't think so. If you want to change the way your program authenticates, you would recompile it, but traditional auth should continue to jfw.

Most packages are auth-agnostic, so wouldn't need to be rebuilt. All of my personal projects fall in this category as well. Whether yours do is something only you can say.

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OK, that's good to know, thank you!

when I use to install standard slack 14.2 then upgrade system to current via the mirrors. now whenever I install slack I use Bobs current iso, open the mirror to a current sight then upgrade it, sbotools to install my whatever's, and it has a sboupgrade option for when I need it for some apps.

I have always been a fan of, if it aint broke, don't fix it mentality. Upgrading for the sake of upgrading has never made any sense to me. Update or upgrade when it fixes a security issue, improves performance, implements a new feature that is lacking in the version you are using or the software is unsupported in some way - which effectively becomes a security issue.

I upgraded to current because I had issues with openssl and some programs using it. In the end,simply updating openssl did not fix it, presumably because there were other dependencies. So I upgraded to current and I just plan to update every quarter or something unless there is a critical security concern. Updating current daily, weekly or monthly doesn't make any sense to me as everything works, Slackware is only used as an Internet Filtering Server (so nobody logs on for weeks at a time) and Slackware is pretty damn secure.

I would recommend upgrading to current because a lot of software with 14.2 stable is actually years out of date - like openssl. So for me it becomes a security issue.

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I wasn't aware of that about 14.2's OpenSSL, but the included versions of MariaDB and PHP are both out of date and unmaintained as well.