`backoff` dependency is problematic

[Kangie]

I'm attempting to package the vastdb SDK for my distribution so that I can easily use it to query the vast data catalogue and have encountered the following wrt backoff:

This package has been masked for removal on Gentoo as per https://bugs.gentoo.org/958592

TL;DR:

• It is broken with modern Python (3.14+) and pytest-asyncio.
• The upstream is inactive

This is not a pressing issue (I've just unmasked the package for now), but is going to cause issues eventually.

Would it be possible to either:

• Make backoff support optional
• Come up with an alternative to importing backoff.

TIA!