Perhaps I should have been more explicit: sending "a commit sha and branch name" is functionally equivalent in that it contains both the information necessary t

Perhaps I should have been more explicit: sending "a commit sha and branch name" is functionally equivalent in that it contains both the information necessary to retrieve the commits and a method of responding to the new commits, but is considerably less convenient. There is an extra step in sending the commit (you must push the commit then send the relevant data using a separate email client), and the resulting email lacks both the commit message explaining what was changed and why, and the changes in question, requiring one to manually examine the commits out-of-band. This is in addition to the need for all contributors to have write-access to the repository, mentioned above. It is, however, also functionally equivalent to a pull request, excepting again the need for write-access.