All of our local patches are required to have the URL of the bug report attached to it. This allows future developers to come along and easily see the history, including whether or not the situation was resolved and if we can delete our local patch.

The end result of this has been several ignored bug reports, including one in which two module authors seem to feel that since their modules don't play well together, the fault likes with the other author. Regrettably, sometimes a fork is required :(