When contributing to an Open Source project you have to build trust with the community around it before they will start to consider guidance and direction from you. It's an unfortunate fact that any sizable project will have a multitude of people who want to tell them how to build it, but who won't help them build it. To insulate themselves from this noise the maintainers most often require contributors to make some significant contributions based on their existing direction before giving them a voice in changing that direction.

If you want projects like Gimp, Inkscape, Krita or Blender to make big changes to meet your needs, start by contributing small changes that meet your (and their) needs. Fix bugs reported by others, implement some features already on their TODO list, add new file format support, etc. Once they know that you are committed to the future of the project, they will let you help guide and direct that future.

But if you come into an open source project with plans to up-end something they've dedicated years of their personal life to, you're not going to get a good reaction. It doesn't matter if you know what you're talking about, of if you have years of industry experience, or even if you're an expert in the thing you're proposing. If they don't trust that you're as committed to their project as they are, they're not going to let you steer.

Michael Hall
mhall119@...