@kernellogger Linus expressed few times that if something was broken for very long time, was not working for long time, it should not be treated as urgent/important fix thus should not go to current RC cycle. Instead, should go via normal development branch, so for the next merge window. I know that stable folks have different point of view - they also expressed it.
I personally follow exactly the same approach in handling fixes: if something was broken for long time, it is regular bugfix thus goes to "for-next" branch, not "fixes / for-linus / for-current-rc".
Now, if a regression was unnoticed for 8 years, it kinda fits above criteria.