So in short, as I understand it, developing OSS is about:
O tinkering with new stuff only because the old stuff has no value or interest to you;
O changing stuff with little or no consideration for the implications;
O no peer review;
O not documenting changes appropriately for your end users;
O breaking what worked before;
O holding your end users and consumers in contempt.
Thankfully, I think we're all pretty much in agreement then
Howard, that only shows that you have no clue whatsoever about the subject, only offensive prejudiced assumptions.
"tinkering with new stuff only because the old stuff has no value or interest to you;"
I am contributing to the VRPN project, which keeps a lot of old virtual reality hardware usable and running, beyond the support of their commercial vendors. That thing is a 15 years old project. I am also occasionally contributing to OpenSceneGraph - this is a project that goes to huge pains to keep working even on ancient systems like SGI Irix, because there are still users who need that.
"changing stuff with little or no consideration for the implications;"
This is has been discussed ad nauseam above.
"no peer review;"
You are kidding, right? Many open source projects are infamous for their strict peer review and getting code accepted requires jumping some pretty high bars. Linux kernel is pretty well known for this - along with the development culture that makes newcomers often cry because people don't hesitate to point out to you that you are a moron if you do something dumb.
"not documenting changes appropriately for your end users;"
That's just not true, even though in some cases the documentation could certainly be improved. Have you seen the changelogs for example on Mozilla Firefox or, again, each release of Linux kernel? Look here:
http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges You can even click through to the individual patches that have introduced those changes and see the corresponding code.
Show me something even close in a commercial world - e.g. with Microsoft's patches we have to be happy with "KBXXXXX - Important security fix" or "Safety-critical update". Good luck figuring out what it will do when you install it.
"breaking what worked before;"
That's just restating of what you wrote before.
"holding your end users and consumers in contempt."
So by a few immature yahoos in a forum that are often not even associated with the project in question in any way (they are users at best) you smear the entire ecosystem. Lovely, isn't it?
With all due respect to your experience and age, I think you are massively out of your field here.