Also, I don't see why those changes have anything to do with "unsigned
things cannot be negative".  As long as those counts are never zero on
entry to those code sections, the existing code is fine, and I believe
that assertion can be maintained.  If you believe the code needs to
defend against the possibility of a zero count on entry, that should
have been explicitly stated in the patch description.

See the tty_port patches in -next - this is an argument about code which
ought eventually to go away replaced by standard helper functions.