Why you should contribute to Open Source?

The biggest problem with contributing to [edit: established] Open Source projects is the barrier to entry. As someone who gets paid to work on a popular open source project full time, I can tell you it's often way harder than it's worth to get involved.<p>You need to download and get the code running on your computer, and configure everything to run correctly. You need to learn the ins and outs of how everything works. You need to install and learn about the code the project depends on (and, most projects will have numerous vendor libraries). You need to get acquainted with the main developers on IRC, so you don't step on any toes. You have to learn how they do bug ticketing, and you need to find bugs you can do. And your first code review? Trust me, it'll be painful. It's not easy to get started.<p>If I left my job today, would I continue to contribute? Sure. But only because I already have a foot in the door, and know my way around.<p>All that being said, I truly believe universities should require students contribute to at least one open source project- it's a great learning experience, and the projects and their users benefit from the volunteer labor.

I think the author is missing an important point: You should also contribute to Open Source projects because <i>you are using them</i>.<p>This is the most natural motivation for contribution. You care about the project not just because it's cool and Free Software and you want to exercise. You mainly care because you're using it everyday - be it your favorite game or an important library (like jQuery, Qt) you use at work.<p>It is often most sensible to fix the bug where it appears, instead of working around it in your application. And with Free Software (aka Open Source) you can simply do that, without having to ask anyone for permission.<p>Getting this bugfix/improvement into the official version is a separate step. But it is worth the effort, because the alternative is to maintain your patches separately from new versions of the library. Or, worse, to maintain workarounds for bugs in the library that might or might not be fixed in future versions.

"Open Source projects offer you a chance to work on something that you want rather than something that others want you to work on."<p>As far as I am concerned starting my own project is more what I want rather than fixing bugs in other people's complicated code which code might also be philosophically very alien to me. To take compromises there is my day job. To work on cool things I start my own project/startup.

I think in some ideal world I'd like to see all companies that benefit from oss donate some employee time back to the community.<p>Ultimately it's mainly the business community that benefits, rather than the coder who are typically paid just around the cost of living.<p>So, why can't more businesses allocate time to contribute back?

For me, as a designer, contributing to Open Source is a great exercise. But as gkoberger states, it's hard to get 'a foot in the door'. And getting your GUI implemented is also a long process.<p>How could this be made more lucrative?

If you have spare dev cycles, I'd say it's in your better interest to build a software product that will make you money.<p>You get all the advantages the author talks about, with none of the disadvantages that the commenters here point out. You get income, and you get something concrete you can point to when it comes time to interview for your next job:<p>"I built and designed somerandomthing.com from scratch. It's built on the mZungu stack and handles peak loads of 14k requests per second. Check it out when you get a chance. It pays my rent."

Here's my answer on HOW to contribute to Open Source, if you're not a programmer:<p><a href="http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/contributewithoutcoding.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/contributewithoutcod...</a>

Nice advice for the original target audience of people with lots of spare time who have already sorted out where the rent money is coming from. For the other 90%+ of us not so relevant.