The cool thing is that you get to triage the issues and handle them as you see fit instead of waiting on a senior developer, tech lead, CTO, executive or someon

The cool thing is that you get to triage the issues and handle them as you see fit instead of waiting on a senior developer, tech lead, CTO, executive or someone else to give you the go-ahead. That's the real power of FOSS imo. It gives all programmers breathing room to try and make good technical and social decisions without being subject to too much politics or interference from management. A sandbox in which to become a better developer and the career/profile benefits are huge.