WordPress 2.8 and the get_link() error in line 647 of dashboard.php

Wow, that's a long title, but it should drive people with this problem right here. If you have upgraded your WordPress installation to 2.8, you might have encountered a nasty error in your Dashboard, which says something about a

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/user/www/wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php on line 647

This has been reported in the WordPress site but no fix has been provided. I found elsewhere a possible fix, but in my case, the new URL would not be saved at all, and the problem would persist.

I fixed it using a good old method, enabled by Open Source©: editing the code directly; I'm posting it here for those of you who would like to do it, until 2.8.1 is released:

$author = $item->get_author();
if ($author == NULL)
{
    $site_link = "";
    $publisher = "Someone";
}
else
{
    $site_link = esc_url(strip_tags($author->get_link()));
	if ( !$publisher = esc_html(strip_tags($author->get_name())))
		$publisher = __('Somebody');
	if ($site_link)
		$publisher = "<a href='$site_link'>$publisher</a>";
	else
		$publisher = "<strong>$publisher</strong>";
}