Hi Steve, you mean not assign to you? I didn't assign to others.
You and me were having a discussion and I didn't see an answer on my question for 6 days, so it seemed appropriate to assign to you to let you know that I am waiting for an answer. Or maybe I am wrong and that was already clear to you?
I am used to be able to change the status in Jira to progress in the process, yet that is not possible in your setup. 'Awaiting Response' is not clear to me, who is waiting? Changing the assignee is possible for me, so to me it seems you provide that option for a reason.

We found a defect in your code and we want to help fix it. I think that is the beauty of open source, to be able to create a better product with community feedback and collaboration. I like Hibernate and promote it over other JPA implementations at my customers because I think it is a mature product and because of this open approach (and because I like the way Gavin started it.) We are happy to contribute. Yet, I am a bit troubled by the difficulty of being able to contribute. It would be nice to have someone answer the question on 'how to proceed' withing a few days. Or set the expectation like 'we will respond within 5 working days'. Just my 2 cents. Thanks.