I completely agree Justin, this is really a problem for the open source community if it is to continue to function into the future.

Previously our company used osTicket, again open source with similar charset issues in the beginning, we had to move because we have new requirements but I have noticed that solutions that myself and other developers have created have been showing up regularly in the past few releases, some of the fixes have been credited where others haven't been.

I also recently solved a 3 year old bug that has caused massive headaches and users have more so learned to live with, I emailed the developer the fix and told them they are welcome to use it. About 5 minutes later I received a rude reply saying that they already fixed the bug and it will be in the next stable release. So I asked why they haven't already distributed the fix (being a big one) as a patch until the next stable release, the answer - no reply.

Where osTicket has the look of being an independent project but I haven't entirely been satisfied this is the case since the last stable release.