This is how the most of the open-source development works. There are many projects with thousands of issues and PRs. Those that will get most attention, typically gets prioritized.

This is even how closed source development works. If you throw issues in a backlog and never follow up to advocate for it then it will never get done.

it's not perfect but it works.

well, apparently it doesn't.

Well, apparently nobody even noticed for 5 years, so that's 5 years that nobody had to even think about that code.

Nah, people noticed, and then they thought "Linux always has these kind of issues, I'm going back to [whatever other OS]" because 99.9% of users will never even TRY to report a bug.

People just think "that's Linux, it's buggy and we have to live with it"