Hi Jim,
Thanks. Yep, I'm familiar with that process, both from reading the wiki docs and from working on other open source (and commercial) projects that use it. In this particular case, the bug has been open for a long time, so I thought I'd mark it as Assigned while I work on it. That said, it's been open for so long that it's not very likely that someone else has decided to work on the same thing at the same time now, so it's not really a big deal if it's not Assigned.
Perhaps this thread will serve as my request for karma.
Thanks,
Martin.
KD6YAM