[UncleEntity]

If I'm poking around in a FLOSS lib and I encounter a bug I'll either submit a fix or a bug report if I can't quite figure out the problem.

About 15 years ago I used to contribute to Blender and did it just because it was something fun to do. The documentation wasn't all that good and if I wanted to figure out what some random button did the easiest way was to read the code and, in the process, I'd find bugs. Also, the Python API wasn't completely comprehensive (this was right in the transition between python 2 and 3) and I took it upon myself to fill in a bunch of holes. Other times some artist would ask for a feature and if it was something within my capabilities I'd oblige. Mostly I'd just try different things and if it were viable I'd submit a patch (where the devs had a different definition of "viable") or horrible fail and just move along to the next shiny thing. Eventually I was given contributor status but would almost always go through the regular patch submission process and/or pester one of the main devs before committing anything.

I started out just learning Blender, because it was interesting, then started hacking on Blender because that was more interesting. In the process I learned a bunch about how python does it thing, which I still use to this day, and got really, really good at hunting down segfaults due to not being the best C programmer.

So, yeah, like everyone else is saying, just find something you enjoy and contribute to that... or don't contribute and just submit good bug reports.