That reading doesn't really agree with the maintainers' responses at all. They say this is desirable functionality, but that they would want to subsume termite

That reading doesn't really agree with the maintainers' responses at all. They say this is desirable functionality, but that they would want to subsume termites features in VTE and Gnome Terminal, and that was their rationale for rejecting the patch. Then they didn't deliver those features in a timely fashion. That's just abhorrent behavior.