Stability of vector bundles on curves and degenerations

We observe that if we are interested primarily in degeneration arguments, there is a weaker notion of (semi)stability for vector bundles on reducible curves, which is sufficient for many applications, and does not depend on a choice of polarization. We introduce and explore the basic properties of this alternate notion of (semi)stability. In a complementary direction, we record a proof of the existence of semistable extensions of vector bundles in suitable degenerations.