Published at LXer:

What defines upstream? KDE, GNOME, Apache, even the Linux kernel are upstream for a Linux distribution, and even a totally different distribution altogether may be considered upstream (for example, Debian is considered upstream for Ubuntu). These upstream projects are the ones that write most of the code that goes into powering your free software operating systems, and to a distribution, they are what makes the whole thing possible. What do you do with the changes you make to the upstream packages? After you've made changes to help fix some bugs, add or change some features, you end up with quite a large set of patches that you need to maintain.

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