broken devel packages

Hi, lately, a lot of devel packages are broken, e.g. https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/network:dhcp/dhcp https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/Application:Geo/python-OWSLib etc. etc. They show messages "Files could not be expanded: could not apply patch 'project.diff'" or similar. If one wants to branch such a package, an internal OBS error occurs (sic!). So how is one supposed to branch such a package? To bug the maintainers of each package individually? Can't this solved in a more general, automated way? Thanks, Manfred