Comment by CamouflagedKiwi

Yes, agreed. And it's not just delays - when the upstream decides that they actively don't want to take a patch that you have a burning need for (and maybe you already have systems in production depending on it), that can accelerate the process to Bank Redis a lot.

I've rolled with the "we'll keep a local patch against upstream" for small changes before, which helps keep on track with upgrades, but depends how feasible that is.