The project lead explained that he didn't accept unsolicited commits. My code ended up getting merged with some other guys refactored code which eventually made it into the code base.
Isn't that sort of contrary to OSS?
No, OSS is a licensing model not a development model. With OSS, if the existing project has a dev model you don't like, you can always fork it and start a project with a dev model you do; with proprietary software (even if the source is available), if you don't like the development model (among other things you might not like) you're, well, forked.