There are some things in there that no longer apply. Some things about policy decisions that have later been changed. Some things that just need some tender loving care to get back up to speed. And mostly, things that are many months old. That means that, unfortunately, a lot of things are going to need some work to apply to current CVS. When the patch is only slightly out of date, I've been generally fixing it up myself, but if it's going to require an entire rewrite.. well, I've been marking those as need-improvement and commenting. I know it's frustrating--the patch worked at one point! But in the interest of getting as much cleanup down as possible, I haven't been rewriting any large patches.
I've also been CCing myself to all the bugs that I've been touching. If I comment on one, and you notice that I'm not CCed, please feel free to add me so that I can respond to any changes on the bug. I'm happy to review patches to things I've looked at, too, so feel free to poke me! Also, if you have any questions or concerns, let me know. I don't know how to make things better unless I know what things are problems.
I'm sorry it's taken this long to get around to these things, but hopefully, once it's cleaned out a bunch, we'll be able to get faster turnaround time on things. But we have to get it cleaned up, first!