Agreed. If you want your change and don’t want to bother the maintainers with a patch they are unlikely to accept, or can’t because it’s proprietary: fork the repo (at whatever tag makes sense), then periodically sync with the latest code for that version.

The likelihood of conflicts is minimal, and often if you see conflicts it’s a good indication your issue may have been resolved. Or if not, you can see if it’s still needed, or how to adjust it.