If only these drive-by contributors would be around to maintain the stuff like secretaries that would be a dream. As it is, I think you may have the roles reversed: the maintainers are not there to merge your patch and look after it in perpetuity.

The entire purpose of these responses is to repel the drive-by contributor who invariably generates clerical work for the full-time maintainer. It's just a sad fact about the nature of this work that it's often done by volunteers who are massively overloaded, and "contributions" are often so minuscule or low quality that they are actually just additional time-demands on already-overworked maintainers.

There is a good book about this: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Public-Making-Maintenance-Sof...

I will take this opportunity to mention Nadia Eghbal's book covering her work researching open source projects & communities. Super relevant:

https://www.amazon.com/Working-Public-Making-Maintenance-Sof...

https://www.amazon.com/Working-Public-Making-Maintenance-Sof...

Seems to be available on the Australian site (albeit shipped from the US). I usually just find something else to buy to reach the $49 free shipping threshold.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Working-Public-Making-Maintenance-...