Over in the LinkedIn Answers sections, on blogs, or in dimly lit conference rooms, I've heard a question repeated a few times.

What open-source project should I contribute to? How do you find a good one?

Normally, the supposed motivation for finding a project in the first place, the reason for this quest, is to increase one's skills (and employable worth), to give back, and to be wholly satisfied as a useful member of society. I and others have responded giving a logical laundry list of axes to be considered while attempting to answer that question.

Fresh contributors to open-source see no immediate financial benefit from their efforts. They're basically doing charity work. Altruism. Love.

Picking a project using a multi-dimensional matrix of variables and personal weights starts to feel like picking your favorite child, based upon the tidiness of their room, their popularity at school, and the odor of their feet.

But the seminal works (I'm assuming there are some agreed-open seminal works so I don't have to list references) always fall back to "scratching an itch" as the fountain of open-source motivation.

Scratching an itch. Your own itch. That's not altruistic. That's not love. That's not even a choice.

It itches. Scratch it.

You don't pick an open-source project. In Soviet Russia, open-source project picks you.

Throw that multi-dimensional matrix out the window. Stop asking people which project you should deign worthy of your love and affection. Just ask yourself one question:

What project that you already use pisses you off the most?

There you go. That's your answer.

If you pick some project you don't use, you're not "giving back," you're simply "giving." And then the whole equation of self-motivation skews, and those bastards not showing enough gratitude for your "gift" starts to really get on your nerves.

If you're scratching your own itch, you don't get upset when someone else forgets to say "thank you."