On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 09:03:21AM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:

Why everyone thinks that it is a good idea to pile workarounds for
software issues in the kernel but updating the other parts of software
stack is a big no-no?

It's probably because pressing 'reset' and have your board TFTP the
new kernel straight from your development machine is far easier than
going through the hoops to regenerate a root filesystem and reflashing
it.

Note that I'm not condoning it, just pointing out why it happens.  And
yes, we must resist the temptation to merge such workarounds.