It is an unwritten law in the LS community to contact the original author/current maintainer of a module before releasing a modification (especially after the ckvwm 1.32b disaster). I've never released a module before the author gave his "ok". Sometimes the original authors have their own plans with a module and might ask you to choose a different name, or sometimes they send you fixes they never released. The original author might also already be working on the next version. You wouldn't know that without getting in touch. There are a few more reasons, but that should be enough.