Since cells is considered experimental and is not a typical deployment this doesn't quite meet the criteria for critical.
Also, it's possible that it's not documented anywhere but we have never made guarantees about the backwards compatibility of nova-cells. It's always been assumed that they will be upgraded in lockstep. Having said that, I think there is value in putting the patches up to help others who may run into this while trying to do something that's technically unsupported.
Since cells is considered experimental and is not a typical deployment this doesn't quite meet the criteria for critical.
Also, it's possible that it's not documented anywhere but we have never made guarantees about the backwards compatibility of nova-cells. It's always been assumed that they will be upgraded in lockstep. Having said that, I think there is value in putting the patches up to help others who may run into this while trying to do something that's technically unsupported.