I've never understood it. I've only had horrific experiences with my open source efforts. From the simplest cases like being ignored on PRs and tickets to mockery in social circles for algorithmic mistakes to finding out my work was enabling bad people to finding out people were misrepresenting my employment status while using my work in violation of the license, I don't think I've ever once had a positive experience with open source as a producer. Hell, I never even knew my extensions to the clojure time library were even being used until another maintainer who had added some incremental stuff over my work disappeared.
I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self it was all a waste of time and I shouldn't do it. Maybe then I could be more positive about it now that I'm better at writing software.
I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self it was all a waste of time and I shouldn't do it. Maybe then I could be more positive about it now that I'm better at writing software.