You're fixing something not broken. If you don't know WHY you changing this or that, you very easy get to "broken xxx in yyyy". Did you checked that "there are no negative effects"?! I guess you don't.
I get the point when you say that it's way much better to know WHY you
commit a patch. Please consider that I'm just a final end-user (this
is not the first time I say so

) with some exposure on programming,
so I tried to point out an issue which
could exist on other systems and
fixing it with a proposed solution working on my system.
But "you're fixing something not broken" is false, at least for me: in
IRIX
is broken, and that is a fact. I have not the hybris to pretend
to be a developer and impose my coding choices but:
a) it was broken for me
b) maybe it will be broken for somebody else, who knows?
b) it's not broken anymore
Now it seems aMule-SVN-r9393 is working smoothly with no side effects,
as far as I know and sure, I'd like to know WHY such a patch works but it
takes a time to do that (and sure I'll try to do my best to spot the problem).
Even if I don't know anything about Newton's law,
when I see a rock falling just above my head, I'd better step aside, not waiting
to know about gravity law. IMHO.
Cheers,
--
Gaznevada