What are consequences of "merger necessitates removal of ...

[Mark A. Hoover]

From: Alan Cox <alan at redhat.com>

>> Sure, nobody's holding a gun to your head, but if you want to have all
>> the security updates, you *are* forced to do the major version
>> upgrades.
>
>Or get enough other people together doing fixes as a group. Its a hard
>and expensive business and it gets harder and harder with time. Nobody is
>stopping groups of people getting together and doing the work though.

Easier said then done I'm afraid.  While I do progam a little on the side, 
a lot of the code I've seen is way beyond anything I understand.