[agibsonccc]

I'll chime in from the other side as a maintainer of a mid size project at a foundation (eclipse foundation, 8k stars, 4k forks)

We get a ton of drive by contributions of people scratching their own itch. That's most of the 3rd party open source contributions out there.

Beyond that, folks I've hired (we're an OSS company) have been grad student hobbyists that started (and stayed) remotely.

Those have also been my best hires.

I wouldn't feel "guilty" about not contributing to open source. These projects aren't built for altruistic reasons.

If you want to contribute, do it to learn something and get something out of it. Make interests align. That keeps it interesting for both parties.

I wouldn't feel "obligated" to do anything as a single developer.

There's only 24 hours in a day, people have kids etc..