In reply to jasonjudge.

I didn't say to "ask permission first", but in any project, you want to be on-board with the other people contributing to it, and thus working as a team. To me, pull-requests just go against that flow. I don't write code until I know what I'm writing, before I write it. I can't really understand the flow you use if your method is to a) write the change and then b) have it rejected because it isn't in line with the maintainer's goals to start out with. Yes, I reject pull-requests that are unsolicited sometimes, because they don't fit with my long-term goals for whatever project I'm working on. Why do all that work and then not have it used? Seems to me like that would put off new contributors, rather than the reverse.