> If a package needs assignment then the maintainer cannot accept code until the copyright is assigned which is an administrative hoop which nor the maintainer, nor the submitter may want to deal with

Some years ago I wrote a little patch (~30 LOC, IIRC) for the yasnippet and got it rejected because it was a few lines longer than the limit for a patch without an assigned copyright.

I tried to game the systems, I split the patch and I asked a buddy of mine to submit the first half under his name to stay under the line-limit and avoid the assignment procedure. That didn't work out. I didn't feel like I should really invest that much energy into to the cover-up of my little work and the yasnippet maintainer isn't that naive.

So I capitulated and proceeded with the FSF copyright assignment paperwork. That went rather quickly, maybe just 2 or 3 days... and after receiving it I felt pretty proud of myself being officially(!) an "open source dev" dude. Except that I haven't resubmit the patch nor did contribute in any other way to the emacs core parts or packages. My attention span was over. Sorry about that.