I don't think it's reasonable to expect they already know that. Whether they should educate themselves... that's up for discussion I guess. The maintainer here effectively says: I read the docs and don't see a reason for a change; if the docs are wrong, prove it by changing them, if there's a bug in dependency handle the issue there.

It's not the best solution, but if I ignored everything I know about this issue, I think it's a reasonable maintainer's approach.