Hi, I've been involved with the Git community since January 2010. Apart from tiny miscellaneous patches, I spent two summers as a GSoC student writing more chunky portions. I'll write down some of my personal observations here; it's nothing new, but I hope the community can benefit from learning what a (relatively) new contributor observes. Classifying them as "positive" or "negative" attributes makes little sense in my opinion. 1. I really like the Git and the community. It's a great piece of software, and the community makes sure that it stays that way. As a result, it arguably has a high entry barrier. 2. It's an exponential climb for a contributor. Looking back, I can find issues with the first few patches that I contributed, but reviews weren't as stringent. It also has to do with the parts of Git I've tried to contribute to- I slowly went from writing tiny documentation patches to large features. 3. Excellent timely reviews. If there's one reason I stayed around despite all the difficulties, this has to be it. I don't know any faster way to improve as a software engineer. 4. Language is beautiful and entertaining! People make use of their language skills to write interesting reviews and commit messages, not choppy dry ones. 5. High transparency. It looks like almost everything is on-list. 6. Largely impersonal. Although there are exceptions, people generally don't talk about their personal lives; some people don't use their real names. Personally, I feel a little guilty because I feel that I've gained more than I've given back. I'll try to make up for this over the coming months and years. Thanks. -- Ram -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html