I just fork, push my patch [...]. If he chooses to pull in the patch, that is his problem. This attitude is dangerous. It works very well for trivial patches,

I just fork, push my patch [...]. If he chooses to pull in the patch, that is his problem. This attitude is dangerous. It works very well for trivial patches, but not for complicated bugfixes, because those are usually buggy themselves. Accepting a bad change is as dangrous as not acceping a good change. So you'll have to stay in touch with each other, communicating via IM, email or a tracking system, until the issue is really solved. And yes, this process is greatly supported by DVCS. However, it only works if the contributor comes with an attitude like "I want this bug fixed in upstream" and not with an attitude like "Here is my patch - use it or don't".