I think that it is interesting that despite the relative anarchy of the Linux development process (I think that at most companies, the fact that the author had already started working on this driver would dissuade any of his more talented co-workers from writing their own driver), it still works, mainly due to the intelligence of the dedicated kernel hackers.

I submitted my first bug to the kernel bug tracker this weekend, and was frankly surprised at the lack of formality surrounding the process. I am still not sure whether it would have been better to email the maintainer of the source file where I think the bug is located, or to email the main mailing list and hope for a response.