I'm not getting paid for open-source, so most of my GitHub stuff is for fun/profit https://github.com/wkoszek https://github.com/wkoszek <- none of these genera

I'm not getting paid for open-source, so most of my GitHub stuff is for fun/profit https://github.com/wkoszek https://github.com/wkoszek <- none of these generated any $$$. So if you contributed something, your learning goal could work, but there's no money to be made. Learn/money idea to what you want is to get a job where open source is welcome, cherished and used. Internships are good to try it out. HIIT in Finland was such place and I interned there, and the result is here: https://github.com/wkoszek/freebsd_netfpga https://github.com/wkoszek/freebsd_netfpga So I've got $$$ for stay + food + cinema for hacking project which I knew we'd publish and I learned a bunch. If you're not for a rich country, Google Code In and Google Summer of Code be an option. You get a $5000 stipend for spending your summer at home hacking code, you get a decent mentor from a project you're interested in and you get experience. Another model is to reach out to projects which are backed by a legal body. For example the FreeBSD Foundation helps and support the FreeBSD Project, and they have sponsored projects. If you're good in FreeBSD and have an idea, I feel there'd be some $$$ if you can deliver something useful. FreeBSD has feature idea pages and if you see a fit, you could just ping people and start collaborating. Last, and I think the hardest, is to start hacking good code in a product you see is (1) open-source (2) backed by a company. I don't know how many hiring managers are techies merging pull requests etc., but even through individual engineers you can get a reference. After 10th pull request accepted by a guy who reviewed your stuff and with whom you've worked, I feel like it's easier to shoot "Are you hiring? I NEED THE MONEYZ!" email.