In terms of memory usage it’s a waste. But in terms of performance you’re absolutely correct. It’s generally far more efficient to check is a word is 0 than to check if a single bit is zero.

General advice regarding open source: even if you tried something out years ago and didn’t like it, it may be well worth giving it another shot. Open source projects often need some time to mature and take their time to improve, but only get better over time.