Apache won't start because of rt error

After upgrading to apache 1.3.31 and perl 5.8.3 I get
apachectl startssl
Use of uninitialized value in numeric ge (>=) at /opt/rt3/bin/webmux.pl
line 50.
/usr/local/bin/apachectl startssl: httpd could not be started

which is an error on this piece of code…mod_perl is installed, so it
should be able to get a version. Works fine in my old versions (apache
1.3.29 and perl 5.8.0). Is this a problem anyone has seen before?

BEGIN {
if ($mod_perl::VERSION >= 1.9908) {
require Apache::RequestUtil;
no warnings ‘redefine’;
my $sub = *Apache::request{CODE};
*Apache::request = sub {
my $r;
eval { $r = $sub->(‘Apache’); };
# warn $@ if $@;
return $r;
};
}