...and I am still unable to successfully compile 2.3RC on FreeBSD 8.4 and 9.3

....and my reports were ignored, so should I assume support for those has been dropped?

Support for FreeBSD 8.4 stopped August 1, 2015.
Support for FreeBSD 9.3 stopped December 31, 2016

Please see here:
https://www.freebsd.org/security/unsupported.html

You should really upgrade to current version 10.4 or 11.1.

Gruß
Matthias

-- 

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to
produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning." --
Rich Cook