What about a keyword waiting for backport (pending backport). It is from the same category as needinfo (ticket status).
I don’t have an idea for the right (short enough) formulation now. Perhaps, needsinfo, needsbackport and patchprovided.
Third person seems quite good. However, backportneeded, backportwaits and backportwaiting make sense too.
Two connected words avoid conflicts (currently, r.patch is matched when searching for patch).
The keyword would be given for example 2407:
http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/2407
Should be needsinfo and backport keywords removed when closing?
Vaclav