In reply to Robin.

several reasons Justin, first, I was just using this as an example to illustrate stalled development, there are many more examples but this was an obvious one because the code is just sitting there ready to be put into core

Nothing in the ticket suggests that this is stalled development. With no patch, it seems like no one in particular cares much about that specific ticket. bbPress development overall may be stalling. I'm not involved in its community though, so I wouldn't know much about that.

second, some things are better in core and other things in plugins. the dev team has agreed that this one falls into the former category but it is just sitting there gathering dust

There are two comments on that ticket with no patch. Maybe there's talk somewhere off-ticket where the dev team agrees this belongs in bbPress, but I'm unaware of it. Personally, I think it's better as an additional plugin.

third, some prefer to use as few plugins as possible to not overload their wordpress installs, why stack a plugin on top of another plugin when you don’t have to?

I'm not sure how you can overload your install with additional plugins. If there's a plugin that does what you want to do, simply install and activate it. It's not going to make a bit of difference if it's packaged within bbPress itself or as another plugin.

fourth, they’re ‘catching flak’ *because* the solution already exists!

That just doesn't make sense to me. If a solution exists for users, then they only need to use it.

bbPress was originally supposed to be lightweight forum software with plugins that expand upon it. Maybe they've changed directions, but continuing to pile on new features does not fit in with the original intention.