It is has been opened since march because the problem was first reported before ACLs were supported. The official due date for a release with this fix is late in software version 12.1.11.EA1. There is a typographical error in the bug that is preventing in from being seen on CCO, you should be able to view it in a couple of day.
As new features get added, they may not support every variant as you are use to in IOS. Switches forward traffic in hardware unlike IOS routers that do it in software. A lot bugs are just features like ACLs that do not support different masking, certain keywords. etc.
Products do not get released with have known high priority or network impacting bugs. Some bugs do make it through testing without being discovered and some low priority ones do not get fixed in time for release, but every effort is made to minimize the number of bugs found in the field and maximize the number of bugs fixed before release.
I know for a fact, that the 2950 was extensive tested in the lab, internally and in the field with select customers before orderability.
