Unfortunately, while thread safety remains a concern, I won't be able to put in a patch - I don't have time to handle any additional support requests or bug reports. Since you have a patch which works for you, I suggest you stick with it. Any further updates to the module should be fairly easy for you to merge with e.g. Meld.

A conditional import for Windows compatibility would be something like this:

try:
    import syslog # Will fail where unavailable, e.g. Windows
except ImportError:
    syslog = None

and then, later, in the relevant code:

    if syslog is None:
        # Code avoiding use of syslog module
    else:
        # Code using syslog module