Giving up ownership of code is hard. In fact, it's much harder than the decision to release the source code in the first place. The ability to accept a pull req

Giving up ownership of code is hard. In fact, it's much harder than the decision to release the source code in the first place. The ability to accept a pull requests comes requires a willingness to accept another programmer's style. This means syntax, but it also means what code blocks get factored into functions, what is a class versus a function, what is a closure versus a member variable, and any number of decisions from significant down to trite. A major maintainer of a project is generally are aware of the weak spots in the project and has a mental picture of how he would resolve them. This picture likely differs from what the pull requestor pictured, and so the implementation differs from what the maintainer imagined it would look like. All of these small differences make the code feel foreign to the maintainer, and gives a feeling of losing control over the code. Overcoming this mental barrier is essential to being able to effectively collaborate on Github, and it's a skill that needs to be developed.