"Lennart Poettering, the Red Hat developer based out of Berlin who's responsible for key open-source projects like PulseAudio and systemd, has offered a presentation on key facts you need to know about becoming a free software developer/hacker"
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTk3OA
Of course there are many other valuable ways to contribute to Free Software; development is just one approach.
Thanks,
Sam.