How I finally got over the hump and contributed to open source

My thought process goes more along these lines: "I really need this feature, but they won't implement it for me. Okay, dang it! I'll do it myself and show 'em!"

Releasing it back to them is just as "egoistic": I don't want them to implement the feature themselves differently, and then I'm stuck with an unofficial version that I wasted time on.

That is probably a motivation for a lot of open-source projects. People start with some code written for yourself, and then release it. The good thing about this is that the code is likely to solve whatever problem the person cared about.

Congratulations :)! The 'address a need' part is spot-on. I think the greatest feeling of all is knowing that somewhere out there, someone's life has just been made easier because of what you did.

Great! This is what keeps open source alive and well. Baby steps and code that scratches an itch. Welcome to Open Source.