I've even written to a couple of authors politely explaining that its useful to know when print is failing because your hard drive is full, but with no success.

By "No success", do you mean they didn't respond or they just refused to oblige? Whenever I write patches, I first install them locally (if I had the module installed of course) and then I post them on rt.cpan.org for all the world to see. I don't get ignored that often, but when I do I simply keep patching on my own (not very often) or just abandon the module (happened once or twice).

If the author is ignoring you, keep your own copy, simple as that.