As a consumer, when upgrading Domino that uses ODA, you often don't need to do much. Yes, it's always advisable to stay on the latest releases of dependencies. But typically older update sites will continue to work, you just don't have access to newer classes or methods.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.intec.co.uk/osgi-maven-and-building-domino-p2-update-sites/