Even with tools like github, which are supposed to make collaboration easier, it is still incredibly difficult to contribute meaningfully to an open source proj

Even with tools like github, which are supposed to make collaboration easier, it is still incredibly difficult to contribute meaningfully to an open source project. I actually had a job where I had the privilege of modifying an open source tool as part of my day-to-day job. Even there, I found it very difficult to give back to the project because the maintainers of the project weren't terribly interest in having or maintaining the enterprise-y, cloud-y features that I was implementing. It seems like most OSS projects have a single key contributor / BDFL who decides the direction of the project. Outside of financial incentives, it's hard to get groups of people moving in the same direction.