> it may be that most of the authors of such small patches have historically had a better idea of their place in the greater scheme of things
Historically, denying those, who went to great lengths for their contributions, even the minor bit of attention they deserved, has led at times to the castle getting torched down.
It pays off to have your expectations calibrated before you engage in an activity. To be named a kernel contributor on the basis of this particular patch seems to be a bit excessive (even if it had been properly signed off, which it wasn't), of course you are entirely welcome to disagree with that.
To give some perspective: there are ~30 million lines of code in the kernel and about 5K named contributors, and a much smaller set of maintainers who will accept patches, modify them, discard them, rewrite them and or merge them based on their judgment, which they generally exercise very well.
Agreed the expectations are so far out of line I doubt the maintainers see a problem. If this guy wants to be a kernel contributor he can keep contributing to the kernel.
Historically, denying those, who went to great lengths for their contributions, even the minor bit of attention they deserved, has led at times to the castle getting torched down.