Yes it will be great to not have to maintain the Patch
<UPDATED>
In the meantime I thought I'd let you know current observations of Nag/Loading patches under 0.172 SDL.
Nag patch enabled
1. Disables Nag Screen (As expected)
2. Disables Loading message but leaves white box (Not expected)
Loading patch enabled
1. Disables Loading message and removes white box (As expected - As long as nag patch is not enabled!)
2. When Nag patch is also enabled (typical) it causes the white box to be displayed (See nag patch point 2)
Also noticed in Mame 0.172 is the omission of the Legal Rom Requirement - Not sure if this was on purpose or not.
* Not sure if this has been an issue with previous releases - As I have just jumped up to 0.172 from an earlier release.