I don't really want to work on a project that would die.

It may be best to choose a project that you would be prepared to take ownership of in order to keep it from dying.

But assuming I'm not nearly as talented as they are (yet), would that cause excessive burden to a large project? Would it be wise for me to try to help with a project with my small amounts of skills?

I've noticed a lot of developers are more than happy to tell you exactly what kind of help they need. I'm really not sure if this is a question that can be answered in general, but may rather have to be deferred to a case-by-case decision on your part.

Good general advice (I think), especially on Sourceforge, would be to be as accurate as possible in your developer profile and then write a cover letter, kind of like your query here, to explain what you want to give and gain in the project.

Good luck with whatever you do !

--
Allolex


In reply to Re: Selecting a project for Learning by allolex
in thread Selecting a project for Learning by Coplan

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