alt Hacker NewsI’ve found trying to contribute to FOSS to have all the stress of work with none of the pay.
I’ll jam with my friends, make a game in a weekend, but I have no interest in dealing with the egos of big FOSS projects.
However, I am seeing vibe coding create a new type of community. In the music space you have tons of people vibe coding new OSes for music hardware.
Akai has even promised to officially support custom firmware on the MPC Sample Keys! Custom firmware has existed for decades, but maybe a tiny handful of people could make it. Now just about everyone can!
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You should not contribute if you don't find it worth it. There are many reasons to contribute. Maybe it's easier for you if your patch gets upstream instead of maintaining a fork, maybe you want to be part of a community, maybe something else.
I don't know if it's good for your CV. I have done a ton of open source before AI was a thing, and the truth is that nobody cares. I still have the basic coding test in interviews, even if the team interviewing me is actually relying on my open source work in their project.
And AI making it easier to contribute to a project, I think it's even less valuable today. Do it if you want to, that's all!
I had the same experience until I found the right project. And the post resonates a lot. Egos and politics are not fun. In some projects people are just fighting for power, it's not about community nor code. Keep looking, don't give up!