Oh sure, that's 100% true. Patches often are applied by packagers when the upstream won't apply it themselves. But there's a big difference between patches for bugs and poor design limping on because we can't change it because people depend on it.

Users just want stable software. Developers want software that works better and solves more problems. The compromise is for users to stick with old major versions. At some point that's no longer tenable, but at least this way the software is free. Certainly no worse than when the same thing happens but you're paying for it.