I got that. You were just making it sound a little too much like the
problem was unique to the Linux world for my taste.
You'd think so, but it sure doesn't seam like it sometimes.
That is just plain wrong. The distributors have as much control as
they want, due to the open nature of the code. In fact, go ask the
kernel devs how many distros they know that don't patch their
software... ;-)
As explained above, they are free to apply any patches they please.