It's always nice to fix up software, but it adds maintenance costs. If you get your patch submitted upstream, it can take months or years before it's in offici

It's always nice to fix up software, but it adds maintenance costs. If you get your patch submitted upstream, it can take months or years before it's in official repositories. And it could be declined. You can wrap all the changes into a patch file, but you still have to apply and build that project every time you clean-upgrade/(re)install your OS. (Maybe it's less common for others, but for me, it's three systems upgraded roughly every 6-12 months.) And you're breaking out of your binary package manager. And if your OS updates, it could overwrite your custom binary. And the second the upstream source changes, your patch breaks. The more projects you patch, the longer it takes to set up a fresh install. So I try and limit it to only things I really care about. Which for me as a programmer, turns out to include my text editor as well.