why not contribute to open source?

In my last post, I mentioned that I'm missing a sense of camaraderie at work, and wondered how hard that is to come by.

Maybe I could get that feeling by contributing to an open source project.

I tried exactly once before to begin working on an open source project. I went to SourceForge and took a look around to see if anything just grabbed me. I had a couple of criteria: it had to be reasonably active, with recent contributions. And it had to be interesting to me personally, the kind of thing where I though "cool!" when I first saw it. I didn't find anything like that; but I only gave it a cursory look.

I think I'll go back to SourceForge for another look. There's got to be some project out there that can use a little help.

I wonder who contributes to the bulk of open source projects? I've always assumed they're mostly written by college students, people with the most time. Or maybe the temporarily unemployed. I guess some people actually come home from coding all day and then code half the night away, too. It would be interesting to find out the number of students vs moonlighting developers.