[scolson]

Was it a simple fix? Certainly an elegant one. Excluding Drupalcon, I'd imagine it took some amount of time to determine the scope of the problem (was this the only avenue?), best method of resolution (there might have been a few ways to patch this that were more complicated before settling on this one), and then testing to make sure additional problems were not introduced on possible fixes.

This was a pretty critical part of Drupal core, so it would be irresponsible to rush out a patch without proper testing and analysis. Could it have been done quicker? Maybe. But I don't think this is a completely unreasonable period of time.