Well, in my case I consider myself a "super motivated highly skilled developer" and I was feeling eager to help the project along ... and it seems we started ou

Well, in my case I consider myself a "super motivated highly skilled developer" and I was feeling eager to help the project along ... and it seems we started out on the wrong foot for that to ever happen, which may (or may not) have worked out differently with a different project organization structure. aliqot is clearly too optimistic, but your argument here might be a bit too pessimistic. That said, my own experience with offering open source projects was also pretty miserable, due to hidden agendas and corporate takeover.