Reasons for working on open-source projects:

* Learning: You learn a lot by working on the system and working with some bright developers.
* Fun: It’s rewarding when you can get something done in such a project, it takes skills and organization on your part.
* Travelling: You get to travel to conferences and hackatons to hack and meet with the other developers, that’s nice as well.
* Doing it the right way: Sometimes work doesn’t permit things to be done the right way by one reason or the other. In such projects you have time to study things and really get them done right.
* You get a lot of exposure but is it something you really want?

Reasons for not work an open-source project:

* I guess you shouldn’t be involved in the development of something unless you are very interested in knowing how it works and you want to hack on it and make it better.
* You shouldn’t be involved in the development of something unless you’re a savy user of the software.

code_swarm, is an interesting experience consisting of a series of videos about the development of open-source software. Using dacing light, rings of color, and snappy music, it shows the history of commits in software projects like Python, Eclipse, etc.