It's only a bug when it doesn't work according to design. The present
design seems adequate in that it allows syslogging via UDP or domain
sockets. No one else has asked for the functionality of using system
calls. BTW I note that Metalog's home page says it's a modern
replacement for syslogd and klogd - so one might have reasonably
expected socket support.

You can avoid having to patch Python each time by the simple expedient
of creating a SysLogHandler subclass (a one-time operation) and using it
in place of the included SysLogHandler.