It has to do with differing opinions on that and in the first part of the sentence. There isA) Updates should aim to fix bugs, AND not introduce features.B) Updates should aim to fix bugs, and not introduce features....Whenever I have talked to FESCO members over any large change, they have said it was the B form they meant and they were ok with updates if it was the way to fix things.
Sure, I think that's a good illustration of one of the ways the policy could be more clear.
But in the context of most of the examples I provided, I think
the policy and practice diverge even when B is the intended
meaning. Blender was updated from 2.93, which is *still* an
actively supported LTS branch (until June 2023), to version 3; if
there were critical bugs to fix, that could have been done with a
much less drastic update. Emacs' changelog is fairly brief, but
I'm not aware of any critical bug fixes that necessitated an
update from 27 to 28. Thunderbird seems like it's usually
maintained upstream for slightly longer than it lives in Fedora.
Those don't really fall into the category of updates that are
required, in order to deliver bug fixes, where the upstream
developer isn't providing them for the branch already in Fedora.