I use open source self hosted software everyday. I love the community and I would love to be able to contribute to some of these projects.
As far as code goes, I basically no nothing about how it works. I see the development section of the repos I use and again, I’ve go no idea how it works.
How can I teach myself how to offer small improvements to the projects I use?
Just a note to say that devs of large, well established projects are always receptive to donations. A lot of these projects have demo sites, which cost money. So, if you can’t contribute to the code side of the project, a few $$ here and there is always welcome in my experience.