How to update major modes?

[Jared Craig Ahern]

Hello!

I use emacs all the time, mainly to edit LaTeX and Fortran 95/2003 files 
(also make and python). I have noticed that some of the keywords that I 
commonly used are not recognized by emacs, which causes minor annoyances 
such as missing syntax highlighting (e.g. 'protected' in Fortran) or 
attempting to spellcheck within labels (e.g. '\autoref{}' in 
LaTeX/hyperref).

Not being familiar with how to help out on GNU projects, what is the best 
way for me to contribute minor changes to some of the major mode lisp 
files?  Do I have to assign copyright and checkout the CVS tree, or can i 
just email snibbets somewhere?  Does, for example, f90.el or tex-mode.el 
have specific maintainers that I should talk to?

Also, if these problems are solved by a feature that I am not aware of, 
or if I missed something explaining how to do subissions on the 
website or wiki, please let me know.  Sorry if I'm asking an obvious 
question.

Thanks!
Jared