It seems like you still don't believe me that people keep patches to themselves because the open source community is so unpleasant to deal with. We had several huge threads about this the last time some alpha jock devs got called out for being assholes. Here are some examples:
Oh, I believe it happens, I just don't believe that it is as pervasive as you suggest. If it were millions sitting on good patches for no reason other than a few people in the "in crowd" being caustic, then the developer-power represented by that group would rival the developer power of the big meanie "in group". Seriously, if that is actually the case, organize.
Here is my perspective though: for the past week I have been sitting on a few commits for git that I would get flamed for if I aired them publicly. Why am I so sure I would get flamed? Because if I am honest with myself, it is because the change is shit. The change is not backwards compatible, has only hypothetical use-cases, and has questionable support in the UI. Until I resolve those things I know it would be flamed (or worse, and more likely, ignored). Now, I'm not sitting on it because I know it would be flamed, I am sitting on it because I know it is shit. If I fix those things, and I don't conduct myself like an asshole when my baby gets curtly shot down, I am fairly confident that I won't be verbally abused. If I am, who gives a shit?
I suspect most people sitting on patches for fear of being flamed, if they are honest with themselves, are so sure that they will be flamed because they understand why they would be. Are there a few who have good changes that are irrationally afraid of being flamed? Yes, I am certain of it. Are there some projects currently headed by people who flame good patches? Absolutely, glibc a few years ago was such a project... but Linux is not one of those projects today.
I found a problem in production, figured out what was going on, wrote a workaround, mailed out a patch, and ... they hated it. I didn't want to fight forever. So, I took my ball and went home, so to speak.
Months later, a different, nicer, person came to me and asked if I still had it. Fortunately for him, I had kept a copy of the change separate from our SCM in my home directory. I handed it over, he merged it, and that was the end of that problem.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112763