If you want to compress a mod for minetest, compress the mod-folder.
Changing init.lua of the default game isn't a very inviting thing to do.
I like the idea of converting back sticks to wood. Making 4 sticks out of 2 wood, instead of 1 wood, I'm not sure about that, but I did find a way to do that, using a mod.
Try it out and if it's good enough for your purposes, re-upload it to the 1st post, maybe with a (crafting recipe) screenshot. Off course you can improve it or make it a bigger mod.
If you want it to move to releases, use WTFPL (because you want it to be "liscense: do what you want with it" (you might want to put --WTFPL in the init lua or a separate readme.txt and compress it again).
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65428713/sticks_2_wood.zip