> I don't understand; so many people depend on it and yet an out-of-the-box solution doesn't work.

It is because of the combinations of some facts:
- Python contributors are volunteers;
- distutils is used a lot and quite brittle, which is a combination that makes us extremely cautious with changes;
- I am not a Windows user or developer;
- Martin knows Windows but apparently not Cygwin;
- nobody submitted patches until this month;
- nobody reviewed patches after they were attached.

You can choose to believe that we are unresponsible, stupid, etc. or accept that in an open, volunteer-based project, subtle changes in a niche part of the code are not committed right away.  Whatever we do, we get blamed for moving too slowly and for changing Python too fast (not by the same people :).

The good news is that Roumev submitted clear patches, and that Trent Nelson put together Snakebite, a set of computers for Python developers that run various OSes including Windows.  Using these machines to test the patches, we can now make progress.