This, a thousand times this. As an ex-contributor to some old school Apache projects, I know too well the over-whelming feeling that the marathon of maintenanc

This, a thousand times this. As an ex-contributor to some old school Apache projects, I know too well the over-whelming feeling that the marathon of maintenance can elicit. Open source becomes open-ended. For sure, start with a thank you. People appreciate thanks for their efforts, no matter the result. It can make all the difference for some people. Want to go beyond and be a little helpful? It's easy -- just take a look around a project and add a contribution. It doesn't have to be an earth-shattering feature; in fact, it's the mundane that can really make a project so much better. Add a unit test, fix a bug, update some documentation. There is always something that can be improved.