It's possible. But if they just attract drive-by patches that people like, that's fine too. Contributions from a wider range of people, that add features they'r

It's possible. But if they just attract drive-by patches that people like, that's fine too. Contributions from a wider range of people, that add features they're looking for (no matter how minor) will make the project more appealing to more people. The GitHub workflow for this - submitting a patch to a project you're not heavily involved with - is very good, and probably a large contributor to the way GitHub is eating everything. No need to subscribe to a mailing list, and no need to get involved with discussions you might not be interested in. But you can easily commit to staying subscribed to your pull request/issue thread. Of course, that may not suit all changes - but as a default, I think this arrangement a good one.