I wonder if we need a middle-class of open source contributor — I see a lot of over-worked maintainers, and I see a lot of drive-by contributors with interesting half-baked ideas or PRs that fix one bug but fail CI tests — I wish somebody would do the time-consuming and boring-but-valuable work of polishing these contributions into something merge-worthy...
> I wonder if we need a middle-class of open source contributor [...] I wish somebody would do the time-consuming and boring-but-valuable work of polishing these contributions into something merge-worthy...
We need a valuing of non-coding contributions, and a way of welcoming them into projects.
I like building community and dealing with people. I like project management, planning, and thinking about funding opportunities. I even like (but am not good at) writing documentaiton - but only if the author of the code is willing to explain _why_ they wrote the code this way rather than get me to write how it works.
I haven't come across a project that is open to welcoming people who bring these skills. People do these things have got to that place through long-term involvement, or because the role fell to them. Or no one does it.
A decade ago there was a drive to get designers and UX people involved in open source projects [0]. It came to little, to the detriment of the entire open source community. Writing code isn't the only skill important in a project, and if we embrace that the whole experience of using the framework, library or software improves.
Incidentally, this work has led to an official role with the project, tons of professional experience and contacts, and some well-paid consulting gigs. I have a very strange and spotty resume due to health issues, so it's been frankly life-changing.