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Confession: I've been a professional software developer for 24 years, and I've never been able to get my foot in the door for an open-source project (other tha

Confession: I've been a professional software developer for 24 years, and I've never been able to get my foot in the door for an open-source project (other than my own open-sourced license stuff). I think part of it is because the projects that are most worthwhile have no shortage of participants, so they don't need to extend any welcome to newcomers; and the projects that need participants often end up that way because they're not clearly good things to be working on in the first place.

organicfigs 7y ago
I've had a career about half of yours (where does the time go?) and this has been my experience as well. I would have loved to contribute to at least half a dozen projects in the last couple of years.
JohnFen 7y ago
Yeah, I've been a professional dev for about 30 years and have commonly encountered a similar situation. Not always, though -- I have managed to make substantive contributions to projects. But, to be honest, I've entirely given up on contributing to such projects a few years back, because so many have become unpleasant to work with due to nontechnical problems. I largely only contribute to my own projects these days.