I know this is controversial, but..

There are many great projects like Apache Webserver or Hadoop provided by the OpenSource Community.

I often feel that the people that actually benefit (financially), from these projects are developers like me, sitting in India, working for MNCs, who has never contributed anything to any opensource project so far, but earn handsomely due to my basic googling skills & the community provided documentation.

Is it fair ? I mean no other industry in the world face such dilemma.Those who work get paid.

I mean I almost am starting to feel guilty of taking such advantage of some thing that I contribute nothing to.

I had to do projects every semester in college (we could choose projects) & I used to enjoy coding then.

I want to contribute. But contributing to opensource is not a task [unlike college or office work].

And life is so busy ..

Are all these opensource contributors really jobless ?[just kidding..]

Could someone please share some personal experiences on how you guys started contributing or any advice on why I should contribute or what attitude in life makes you keep aside time or is it that you just crazly love writing code or is it that you just love to see your name in the contributors list or do you have a local coding group you hang out with ? Do you feel I am destined to do this ? This is my part of contributing back to the world ?

Whats that basic mentality that make you guys want to contribute, while I just want to finish my work and go home. What makes you guys tick ?