You can use W functions and convert the WTF-16 strings you get to WTF-8 and use that in std::string without problems.
On top of that, how many new gotchas these “modern” Windows functions hide, and how many fix cycles are required to polish them to the required level?
Yes it would have required numerous fix cycles, but curl in my mind is such a polished product and they would have bit the bullet.
They fix bugs because they simply want their product to be better, if if I were to take a guess? Like, I'm sure curl's contributors worked on OS-specific problems before, and it wouldn't be the last.
> to fix obscure worstfit bugs.
Again my premise is "if there are actually common problems caused by it". This specific bug does sound like that, at least not for now.
Because they care. That's it.
> I've never paid for curl.
I'm sure people who develop it doesn't want money and fame, but they're just doing what they like. However, curl has commercial support contracts if you need.
> Who even develops it?
Daniel Stenberg et al. Daniel can be found at https://daniel.haxx.se.
> Sounds like a thankless job to fix obscure worstfit bugs.
It may look thankless, but it's not. curl is critical infrastructure at this point. While https://xkcd.com/2347/ applies squarely to cURL, it's actually nice that the lead developer is making some money out of his endeavor.
However, in neither case this is a shortcoming of curl. They'd be responding to a complicated problem caused by the platform they're running on.