Comment 4 for bug 13983

I'm sorry to post here instead of upstream, but there have been ~17 duplicates over 6 years and no developer action, leading me to believe that upstream is *not* the place to get this fixed. Is there anything to be done to motivate an actual fix? Someone (within Ubuntu, maybe) to beg, or a bounty to establish somehow? Please tell me what I could do that might make a difference.