> And, of course, emailing or establishing contact first is > pretty much never a bad thing. Well, as long as one follows > through with what they say they're going to do.

There's the implicit engineering problem right there! You've always do a bit of implementation/thinkening before even going that far. Don't want to be the Flakey Sir Promise-A-Lot, do you? But of course it is sometimes hard to draw the line if it's a reasonably interesting problem ... and that's where hearts get broken and egos get bruised.