Very strange!
I seem to remember my bike could start in gear with the clutch pulled, before the mod. The manual also confirms this.
Otherwise just imagine the embarrassment of stalling in front of Graeme Jarvis on one of the climbs at Erzberg and you have to go searching for neutral

 

Oops....I do apologize DT175MX for my slightly confusing comment. I'll take it on the chin, as it seems stuffing bits of wire in my clutch switch for nearly 2 years has damaged the connector & it doesn't fit my clutch connector anymore!

At least my floored experiment got raulor on his way to checking if the by-pass was working properly.

 

I did the mod by using a few strands of fine wire, rather then a piece of solid 1.5mm cable. The trick is to place the fine wire across the connector terminals and reconnect the connector - jamming the "short" in place. Then there are no cables flopping about, everything looks like standard and it should prevent any corrosion in the unmated connector. The fine wires only need to carry microamps (I measured it).