If you have coding skills and want to use them to develop open source software you have several options. You can start a new project by yourself or with some friends, or you can join an existing project. The advantage of the former is that you get to make the rules and there is a pretty good (i.e., 100%) chance that your code will be accepted. Not all established open source projects welcome new people without some vetting and your code is certainly going to be subject to significant review. If you are new to operating systems, it’s not likely that your code will be put in the Linux kernel tomorrow, for example.