The minute an issue goes multi-functional it enters a political arena. The developer may theoretically be able to give input to such an arena, but usually they lack the verbal skills to make an impact at that level. If your experience is otherwise consider yourself lucky.

To address your last point, a non-module solution is not necessarily a re-invention of the wheel; indeed instead of backporting there is yet a third option: just copy the parts or even ideas you need from the module rather than treating its use as an all-or-nothing proposition and suddenly the developer is king again - I used that method to sneak Devel::Trace into a Q/A environment.