[exasperaited]

I don't know about "required" but I do know that people who depend on any piece of open source software (or would like to) should be encouraged at every turn to contribute somehow — put a tutorial video on youtube, hang out in a user group and answer questions, work on translations, confirm bug reports, do test builds, whatever.

I have written a small open source package that became hugely widely deployed without my knowledge — a really very pleasant surprise — but hadn't done an awful lot more in terms of open source contribution for a long period of time until two or three years back when I began to contribute in various ways to a project that has really changed my life for the better.

I now feel a whole lot more ethical about the amount I get out of it personally, because I am putting in about ten hours a week of my own time.