Leonid Mamchenkov points out an article that lists some of the common pitfalls developers should consider when it comes to working with Open Source projects.

The blog post talks about roughly the same, but from a different perspective. It's more for those who are starting a new project, rather then joining the existing one. There are plenty of 'myths' that go around about how is it is to do Open Source and how everyone can do it, and that all you need to succeed is to start. That's not so true, of course.

He outlines the article into some of the key points like:

• Your community will help you build HARD DIFFICULT FEATURE X.
• Folks can understand your code.
• Contributors are like coworkers.
• Cross distribution support is easy.
• Users help users and it’s ok to just be a developer.

Check out the full article here: Recognizing and Avoiding Common Open Source Community Pitfalls.