I submitted a miniscule patch to tcl-mode (or font-lock) a couple decades ago. It was to speed up syntax highlighting for a particular style of commenting. Maybe a 3-6 line patch, tops.
I spent 20x more time back and forth on copyright assignments, including getting a release from my company, etc to get the patch in. I pushed through because I felt like I was always "just one more yak shave away from finishing", but if I knew at the start how much time it was going to take, I'd have kept the patch on our own private site-lisp. That's a problem, IMO.
The copyright release process where I work is pretty liberal, but the amount of people I have to get involved is fairly prohibitive. If your boss doesn't like doing paperwork, you're not going to get a release...
My memory is that my correspondence was directly with rms on this patch and it was required at the time, but the fact that it would no longer required is definitely beneficial, so thanks for that update!
I spent 20x more time back and forth on copyright assignments, including getting a release from my company, etc to get the patch in. I pushed through because I felt like I was always "just one more yak shave away from finishing", but if I knew at the start how much time it was going to take, I'd have kept the patch on our own private site-lisp. That's a problem, IMO.