I would add to the list "It is too frustrating". I've contributed to several open source projects in the past (Linux kernel, gnome, etc.), but doing so is hard

I would add to the list "It is too frustrating". I've contributed to several open source projects in the past (Linux kernel, gnome, etc.), but doing so is hard work, even if the changes are trivial and you don't have a reputation in the community for the project. Most recently, it took almost a dozen emails over 4 days among 3 different people to get a 3 line patch committed to a driver. The truth is contributing to open source is a social problem. You have to get to know the maintainers, build their trust, and over time, it gets easier to get patches in. If you can meet the maintainer for an hour or so at a conference, it lowers the bar but maintainers of popular projects are often swamped at these events. More often than not it is easier to fix the bug for yourself and move on, using git to keep up to date with new releases.