It's a micro optimization. On most platforms CPUs has instructions to
compare with 0 fast. DB_SUCCESS is the most popular outcome of functions
and this patch optimized code like (err == DB_SUCCESS)

BtrBulk::finish(): bogus assertion fixed

fil_node_t::read_page0(): corrected usage of os_file_read()

que_eval_sql(): bugus assertion removed. Apparently it checked that
the field was assigned after having been zero-initialized at
object creation.

It turns out that the return type of os_file_read_func() was changed
in mysql/mysql-server@98909cefbc37e54efc6452c7e95bccbf64ac9213 (MySQL 5.7)
from ibool to dberr_t. The reviewer (if there was any) failed to
point out that because of future merges, it could be a bad idea to
change the return type of a function without changing the function name.

This change was applied to MariaDB 10.2.2 in
commit 2e814d47 but the
MariaDB-specific code was not fully adjusted accordingly,
e.g. in fil_node_open_file(). Essentially, code like
!os_file_read(...) became dead code in MariaDB and later
in Mariabackup 10.2, and we could be dealing with an uninitialized
buffer after a failed page read.