If you work at a company with a large code base, you quickly come to realize that few people know how everything works. Most people only know a single part of t

If you work at a company with a large code base, you quickly come to realize that few people know how everything works. Most people only know a single part of the code that they are working on intimately. It's this intimately part that scares some people. Because each person working on the code intimately creates the picture that each person knows everything about the code. Which just isn't true. Start small and make sure you talk to the maintainers and make sure they are comfortable with you and what you want to work on. Introduce tiny patches to begin with. You'll disarm any gatekeepers this way, and get people on your side with you. The larger the project, the more politics involved generally.