Optifine is notoriously invasive and just as notoriously closed-source.
If Optifine doesn't work properly when combined with Forge it is their issue to sort out as they can see exactly what happens inside Forge but we cannot do the same with Optifine.
It was already decided that the rule of thumb is LTS will be the version immediately preceding the latest (excluding transitionary versions which will be skipped for LTS qualification)