Any open source commiters? experiences??

Does the ranch have people who contribute to open source? How do you balance open source work and the usual stuff that pays.I'm sure nobody gets to commit 'code' the first day. How did it all start. Please share your experiences.

Open Source pays, too, just in a different way: You get software that is adapted to your need, but are not the only one maintaining it.

We are using a whole bunch of open source projects at work, and there are several we contributed bugfixes and features to.

Actually the company I work for is planning to open source some of our more low level utilities.

The ranch is composed of many tens of thousands of people, most of whom are Java developers. I'm sure that some of them have contributed to open source projects. Or were you specifically asking about ranch staff? If so, the answer is also "yes". Javaranch has two projects on Sourceforge right now.

Usually, I think, if someone who wants to get involved in an open source project, he will download the source code. If he thinks he has an improvement to that code, he will submit it to one of the developers/committers on the project. If he makes enough good suggestions, and his good seems like good code, he will become a committer himself.

Obviously open source development is done during the developer's "free time" and not during the time an employer is paying him unless, as in Ilja's case, the employer wants to open source some of the code he is paying to have developed.