It simply means that the ticket has been acknowledged as a bug/issue, nothing more. As you might have noticed it's been reported in Debian in 2007, so it doesn't seem to be that important. I know that doesn't help you but the fact that there's a work-around makes it even less important. I'll take a look, no guarantees.
As for reporting issues, it might help to jump in an IRC channel [1] and harass people directly, then it's harder for them to ignore you ;-)
It simply means that the ticket has been acknowledged as a bug/issue, nothing more. As you might have noticed it's been reported in Debian in 2007, so it doesn't seem to be that important. I know that doesn't help you but the fact that there's a work-around makes it even less important. I'll take a look, no guarantees.
As for reporting issues, it might help to jump in an IRC channel [1] and harass people directly, then it's harder for them to ignore you ;-)
[1] https:/ /wiki.ubuntu. com/IRC/ ChannelList