I am curious as to why so many sources have to be patched in the building of an LFS system. Is there a general reason that applies to all these source packages, or does each patch have its own separate reason that it is needed?

I am just wondering because I have used a number of different linux different distributions over the last eight years or so. I have been compiling the kernel and various applications (even GNUCash - try that from source on a Slackware box sometime!) almost the whole time, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have had to patch a source tree in order to get something to build. So, as I read ahead to prepare to build an LFS system, it just seems to me that there is a lot of patch work involved, and I don't grok why.

Can someone here enlighten me?

The reasons are clearly explained in the text, most are for bug and security reasons, some are to bring the installed package into FHS compliance, a minority are to fix compile problems

OK. I guess then I will just read through each one as it is called for in order to get a better specific idea of what each of them do. It'll take longer, but at least I will have a better understanding of what I'm doing.

Try detting the Source RPM's (SRPM) from another distro and look inside if you can.
LFS's patches are nothing compared to the number of patches other distro's tend to make...

I am confused, why do we have different number of patches on different distros? I thought that they all come from the same source.

Does this mean that one distro is more dilligent in fixing bugs and others just don't care?

There are different programmers and designers between the systems.
LFS only focuses on necessary patches (security and bugs)

All the other distro's have their own tweaks to make things work how they wish. Also, all of their tweaks that tend to be patches may not be necessary and thus donot make it into the LFS patch tree.

The LFS patches due come from different sources, but that doesn't say anything whatsoever about other distro's.

Linux is not a company, its a cluster of many people getting the freedom to have an operating system their way (or at least closer to that than ever before) This means you will not find any consistancy in any of the development as they all are different depending whom you obtain them from. (thus the many many different patches).

So indeed, one may be better at fixing bugs in certain areas...assuming that their patch doesn't cause a bug elswehere which may result in more patches for more programs/libraries..