1) CC yourself on the bug report (
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=547777) so you get kept up to date on the implementation. You'll get updates as soon as they happen. If you go this route, just sit back and wait. There's nothing more you can do.
2) Pay someone to do it faster. With the right incentives, I'm sure you could get it implemented by tomorrow.
As with all simple things, they require both manpower to implement and even more to test the implementation. It takes longer than you'd expect to implement passwords.
Alan.