A &quot;push request&quot; would just be a git-format-patch on the contributor&#x27;s side and a git-am on the project maintainer&#x27;s side. Github wouldn&#x27;t have to create a separate repository - they&#x27;d just have to keep an incoming &quot;mail&quot; spool for each repo and show some UI letting the project maintainer review these patches and approve them or deny them. Maybe there actually would be an email address representing &quot;push requests&quot; to the repo, but more likely I&#x27;d imagine github would just offer an upload box on the project page where you could post a patch file.<p>This would be so much easier than the pull-request dance that I bet it would lead to a lot of simple fixes or improvements being contributed by people who otherwise wouldn&#x27;t get involved at all. Those have value in themselves - but it would also go a long way toward helping recruit new project members, if people could dip their toes in easily before having to go through all the mumbo-jumbo of a private fork and configuring the upstream and all that.