I just noticed a patch I submitted a year ago was accepted this week. While the patch was sitting there gathering dust in bugzilla (or whatever), I was using my version locally and enjoying the benefits.

If I had designed and submitted a nice new icon instead of code, my experience would have been roughly the same.

Bottom line is that I didn't need to have my work accepted by anyone to validate my efforts. What I needed was to have the code run 20% faster for a rare use case; mine. And thanks to the project's authors choosing to go open source, that's what I got. Then, the authors accepted my patch, further lessening my work load by saving me from re-patching future versions.

So, do designers really get what 'open' implies? Would they enjoy being able to modify the splash screen for their own Eclipse install, even if nobody else would ever see it (they can btw)? I think having a headless mode is a much better feature than anything design-related ever could be. But that's me - other people want different things, and that is kind of the idea...

Also, obviously better 'things' (code, design, whatever) will sometimes take forever for no reason at all. Like this, for instance (the couchdb-python the logo is terrible): http://code.google.com/p/couchdb-python/issues/detail?id=126

Just remember not to worry: things tend to work out OK.

Indeed, it's also a matter of actual vs imagined competency. What is the point of contributing to a project if someone with an outsized notion of their range of skills can come in and botch up previous work?

The issue is whether the person modifying or reiterating a work is competent to do so; We hear all about it with programming, but there is such a thing as "cargo cult design" too.

Also, I don't see it as whether a specific design contribution is "a work of art", with all its associated assumptions of involubility; in this context design is ever changing according to the evolution of a project.