title: What is Upstream First Policy
body: <p>Why it is called "upstream"? </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>After a release branch is announced, only serious bug fixes are
    included in the release branch. If possible these bug fixes are first
    merged into master and then cherry-picked into the release branch.
    This way you can't forget to cherry-pick them into master and
    encounter the same bug on subsequent releases. This is called an
    'upstream first' policy that is also practiced by Google and Red Hat </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p><a href="https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/gitlab_flow.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">from gitlab flow docs</a></p>