I think that OP had not so much a problem with the PowerPC maintainer coming up with his own solution (which is basically the same, except maybe fitting the coding style better), but the fact that all his efforts for finding the root cause of the bug were not recognized.

The PowerPC maintainer could have send him a message like: "Thank you for the patch. Thank you for diving into this bug and finding the root cause. I will attribute your effort. I have taken the liberty to come up with a solution that better matches the coding standards. I hope you do not mind. I will submit the following patch." and I think the OP would be perfectly happy.