Why am I still not engaged in open source

In the previous article published by me on Habré (" So why aren't you participating in the development of Open Source software? ") The author raised the question of why developers are not participating in open-source projects. Today I propose to look at the situation with the eyes of a developer who wants to help open source, but once again postpones this step. What is stopping him?

Back in 2011, Brandon Hays wrote an excellent article on this topic, the translation of which I publish below. Through the experience of the author, I wanted to reach a systematic understanding of the problems that make open-source “unfriendly” for newbies. I would be very happy if readers share their experiences: has something changed in recent years? How did you solve / solve the indicated problems? What should be done to make it easier to participate in open-source projects?

And yes - despite all this, I personally believe that Open Source is the only possible future for software development. Many will disagree with me - please do not throw stones, I will try to develop this idea in more detail in our next articles.

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I'm such a hypocrite. A few months ago I wrote a post about overcoming the fear of participation in open-source projects.
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And since then has not taken a step in this direction. In the comments on Twitter, I wrote that for beginners, open source projects are similar to tiger cages. I have to say, since then my opinion has not changed.

No, I, anyway, participate in several projects. But I still feel like an outsider, because my contribution does not concern the code.

So why I (and, I suppose, many others) remain “open source meekly”?

Strongly risking to project my feelings about the situation to others, I would put forward a few assumptions.

• There is no certificate, rite, or insignia that could publicly declare its willingness to participate in the work on open source software.
• It is not clear where to start. Judging by what I heard, most of the work of the participants is the addition of missing, but necessary functions or the correction of detected bugs. They can solve problems identified in tests and even publish patches. I do not come across such things every day. Few developers ask for specific project assistance, and even less - they seek to take custody of beginners.
• Guidelines make the life of curators easier, and mine more difficult. Yes, the supervision of the open source project is a difficult and ungrateful work. But I met the rules of participation and guidelines, which pack a simple fix idea into so many layers of bureaucracy that associations with Microsoft unwittingly arise.
• Open source for those who code better than me. I understand that this sounds like an excuse, but I’m uncomfortable with the realization that the software that I publish can be used by real developers.
• My attempts to participate in open-source projects were unsuccessful - this makes me feel stupid. Here I sent a few pool of requests, and none of them was approved. And not a single comment on the reasons. It's like a confirmation from the universe, they say, yes, you are an idiot and your "help" is out of place. Extremely humiliating waste of time.
• No time. I have a child, a new car and a growing mountain of responsibilities. It takes me 3-10 times longer to write code than experienced developers. And non-code related contributions also take time to devote to coding. Yes, this is a universal excuse that is not so significant without the others, but it is worth mentioning it.
• Lack of culture collaboration. I think most developers are accustomed to understand everything themselves and do not expect support from outside. But does open source really be some kind of spiritual path where no one can join you?

So yes, open source can be as scary as a cage with tigers. I have no solutions to the above problems. I just would like to see more projects that explicitly indicate what they want from contributors: in the form of, say, calls for additional testing or to correct specific bugs or to refine the documentation. And I would also like to receive prompt responses to pull requests.

It would also be great to add GitHub functionality with notifications about active projects corresponding to your professional level. That would be a nice feature.