It does not hurt anything to look into some of the problems. Even if you are duplicating effort, you are educating yourself in the structure. That said, you should definitely be on the mailing list and communicating with others who might be thinking the same thing.

Reading the list above, at least one has mentioned that the bug has been fixed. None of the others do. The links will tell you if it has happened in the most recent kernel. If so, you can be pretty sure that it's still unfixed, but only by playing well with others will you know if you're hunting alone...