2008/6/23 Georg Grabler <ggrabler@gmail.com>:
I generally don't aggree with the "upstream" philosophy as well - or at least not to 100 %.
Bugs can (of course) be upstream bugs. As in other distributions, bugs SHOULD get fixed in arch. I'm not saying that the devs must fix bugs in the upstream distributions, but at least the bugs should be followed upstream, and if a patch is available fixing the problem - it should get fixed (patched) in arch as well.
Most of the problems in arch, like kernel performance regression problems with glx (bug #10328 in bugzilla.kernel.org, submitted in march - fixed in the 2.6.25.8 release which is 1 day old - 4 month at all) , gnome bugs, kio bugs in kde3, as well as many others have upstream fixes available. Due to the arch philosophy, they will never appear until they are available upstream. This saves a lot of time to the devs, of course. Thogh, waiting half a year for fixes can be annoying (or is annoying if they directly effect you).
We _do_ apply _some_ patches from upstream when necessary, without waiting for next upstream release. However, we do not apply patches that are not critical for software to function. P.S.: /me wishes this thread won't turn into another "patched vs. vanilla" discussion (Trying to be vanilla doesn't mean Arch prohibits any patching at all, and applying some patches doesn't mean Arch is becoming like Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/etc.) -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)