What contributing to Open-source is, and what it isn't

In French, we have an idiom for contributing: "To bring your stone to the building". Imagine if people in your city decided to gather together and build a school for the community. Very little knowledge of how building actually works, and even less knowledge on how this particular building is being built. Experienced builders will lose time and patience because of the spam, and young builders will leave bitter, believing open-source is not welcoming and/or not for them. Why do you build a school? Because you want a school to be built. You build it to enjoy the final product, you don't build it for the sake of building it, or to train your building skills. You follow the purpose of open-source, not just your love for building.