I suppose Eric himself would say that those are features, not bugs. The project leader, even though he solicits programming assistance from the community, is still the project leader. Meaning that until someone does a better job, Eric decides what goes in his program and what doesn't.
Personally, I don't use fetchmail, so I can't say for sure. But I really like the stuff I've read by ESR. If nothing else, he is the de facto spokesman for the open source movement. That would be a damn good reason to get a big head, by the way.