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It really depends on the project and the contribution(s). I have experience with many open source projects, and the large ones are generally closed to small new contributions (the ones that can be studied and written in a few hours). Most of the time, they will rot, even if they're useful (as in "solves an open issue" useful) and competently written. Some time ago, there was discussion (commotion) about the years-old Python bug fix that was never mainstreamed. In the real open source world, that's routine. Even Torvalds once acknowledged this phenomenon; I stress that I'm talking about competently written code. Once, the maintainers of a certain project, which is structured around donations, essentially ignored my company's development contribution offer, even if it was significantly more valuable than the donation(s) they typically get. To summarize, for small projects, or those who desire traction, contributing by all means, but for large ones... money, or just shift the attention to smaller ones :-) |