I hear ya on that feeling you get to start a project. Ya get so motivated, want to be part of the cause, but it's so hard to keep dedicated to it. Just Look at all the great ideas at sourceforg...

You could just subscribe to the dev mailing list and send the developers an email, they might patch it themselves.

technically you're obligated to do that by the licencse of the code. (at least GPL, not BSD though)