[dom0]

> To be honest, a PR from someone who doesn't use your software, who is unfamiliar with its structure and only wants her PR merged so that she can say 'I am an open source contributor' is a hassle.

This is a reason why mandatory open source contributions (yes, that's part of some curriculae nowadays) are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, some of these go on and do valuable work, others just want to invest the absolute minimum effort to pass the class.

[nebabyte]

Hah, that seems like a terrible idea. Do instructors think there is a limitless well of trivially-findable bugs that could be correctly fixed by beginning/intermediate CS students...?

I suppose if the instructor is running the project that's a different story - just upload a buggy-as-hell project with fixes you expect students to be capable of - and preclude unleashing your class on the community at large until you can (patiently and didactically, because you know them to be beginners to VCS) show them the ropes on something harmless...

Of course, I'm sure that's not the case everywhere, and god help those who have to deal with that.

[Macha]

Could explain a weird thing that happened to me. I used to throw everything on github as a teen, got a pull request last year to a to-do list app I'd written to learn python years ago