[tedyoung]

I won't address the "I cannot believe" part...

>If you are already familiar with OSS, but so far never found anything "interesting", the best thing to do IMHO would be starting your own

I couldn't disagree more. If you haven't found a project that is "interesting" or simply useful, then you're not really programming (or perhaps aren't looking in the right place?). There are SO many useful projects, or semi-useful projects (and lots of not very useful ones) that there's got to be at least one (if not dozens) that would be interesting.

Regardless, if one couldn't find an interesting one to contribute to (at least a little bit), starting a new one would be a bad idea because, unless it's really unique or compelling, won't get a lot of attention and you won't get any good feedback on what you're doing (which is critical if you want to learn).

I do agree that the social aspects of contributing to and/or running an OSS project is important. So even if you're not contributing code to a project, if you're filing issues or making comments on other issues, that's a great way to learn.

[supar]

If you are not familiar with Linux (for example, you're working on Windows or mostly doing web-development), it could entirely be. Mac OS is more friendly, but I certainly saw many developers that didn't scratch the surface and directly went with XCode/ObjC/iOS. In that sense, you can build a career without ever considering OSS development/usage.

What's best for somebody that, as of now, is questioning which project should be looking at? If you don't know what you're looking for, any advice is just as good as a google or github search (ie: useless).

If you start by having fun, even by publishing your random projects, you will be dragged in by dependencies (that's ironic). I would rather recommend choosing something fun to work with than a random project to look at.