Yes, sometimes it takes persistence to get a patch accepted.
Persist and prevail. My first big contribution was the hook_db_rewrite_sql patch. On Dec 23, 2004 I contributed the first patch, and Dries' first comment began with "I'm not likely to commit this". A mere 21 versions later (real revisions, not the doh-i-attached-the-wrong- file variety), on January 16, 2005 it was committed. The issue http://drupal.org/node/18260 is open since last March, true, but the first patch happened in October only and saw only 10 patches (I saved the issue HTML and grep'd for Attachment:). I used db_rewrite_sql as an example because a) you can't say I had the advantage as a "household name" -- back then I was a rookie but you *are* a household name, longer than I am b) in the end, rewrite sql was three times the size of this patch. I could continue long analysing the similarities between the db_rewrite patch and this one but I won't. Regards NK Ps. As you all know, I am for the structured links patch. I even rerolled it once or twice.