The reason Devuan exists, is an itch named systemd. Should we be
looking for other itches?

I happened across one, in trying to get debootstrap to run on Gentoo
(to make a chroot jail). If something corrupts the status or available
files in /var/lib/dpkg the system is hooped, and re-install may be the
easiest thing to do. I believe that one of the problems with trying to
fix those two files, is that it isn't really known what gets put in
there. Perhaps that itch could get scratched?

It isn't surprising that maintainers occasionally alter code from
upstream. If nothing else, they may do so to fix a bug. I recently
ran across a widely used package used across much (most? all?) of
Linux, or even FOSS, and found that functionality of the code was
reduced because of a policy (I gather). A person moving from a
different Linux to that particular one could be surprised at this.
They developed their itch, and decided to scratch for everyone.

This flavour of Linux is also the source for projects used elsewhere,
and this policy may be active in the code base. Which could mean other
Linux people (including Devuan) could end up adding in functionality,
and maybe upstream will tell you to buzz off or maybe they won't, but
they will not incorporate your fix. Your fix causes them to itch.

Gord