You are somewhat right about flaging the problem upstream, but Red Hat should be made aware of the problem. If the applet is broken, should it still be part of the next release? Should it be removed? RHL release should not be blocked by a faulty applet, but it tarnishes the image of RHL when installed applets installed. Then again, the author might fix the applet 2 weeks after the new RHL was released. The fixed rpm could then be made available. It would be sad if an applet which might be usefull for many would be missing in a version only because of it was broked for a couple of weeks, because of bad timing.
What is the policy of Red Hat regarding this issue?
File the bug against the most recent affected Red Hat is my suggestion and do mention its in older ones. Also if its a gnome applet gnome-bugzilla would be good because 2.4 is about to freeze..