I got started with RSS using a TUI program on unix, whose name I forget. But then Google came out with Reader (and Listen for podcasts). When they lost interest and dropped them, I exported my OPML and switched to apps I could find on f-droid. Now I back up my OPML scrupulously and am currently happy with Feeder and Antennapod; Google taught me I didn’t want to depend on someone else’s server for something like this; it’s too important. If ever I find I want some feature that requires a server, I’ll self-host something (Nextcloud?), but I seem to be well enough served by purely local clients.
In the sense I think you’re asking, never: contributing a fix or an improvement is never a one-and-done, fire it off and forget it edit. Each contribution is a request to open a dialog. Implicit in each pull request are multiple questions, perhaps including “is this a good idea”, and “do you like this attempt to do it”.
If the project maintainer who reviews your PR doesn’t like it, they can expend the effort to try to explain why, and teach you. So try to make their job easier, by opening with a clear explanation of why you’re doing it, and if what you did involved design decisions, why you chose as you did.