I want to create this thread about mentor ship because I know it is something we are all supposed to do to be successful. It goes without saying that successful people have had good mentors.
On the other hand, mediocre people have not had good mentors.
There are lots of different type of mentors, work life etc. but obviously what I would like to focus on here is mentor ship for the purpose of becoming a better free software game developer.
Part of the problem is, I don’t really have a good template of what a good mentor ship relationship is supposed to look like.
(on the other hand, an evil mentor ship relationship, that's easy, you just find this guy (or gal) who had a really bad reputation, and ask him (or her) for advice while ignoring half of it. Also, you waste the person’s time with trivia, don’t ask them enough questions that you should because you are afraid of their sith lord powers, and Darth Sidious and Anakin Skywalker is a bad example. I’m not really sure what Akakin learned from that except to get angry and lash out at people.)
So, there are really a couple major problems when wanting to find a mentor to help you make a living as a free software game developer
1. Not a lot of people have done it, and even those that have haven't gotten very wealthy from it.
2. There are lots of mentors for things like learning Debian packaging, in fact they have a whole system set up to do it, but to me, it just looks like learning a bunch of rules. I have a hard time taking advice, and following directions. I already had a lot of teachers that I mostly annoyed with stupid questions. Also, teachers give you a grade, so they have that kind of power over you, mentors don’t really give you a grade. On the other hand, if the relationship (mentor ship) is not working, either party can just walk away from it at any time and there is really nothing to tie the two people together.
3. Technically, you could have two mentors, one to help you on the free software side, the other to help you on the making money as a game developer side, but on the other hand, the person making money on the game developer side doesn’t really share your moral compass, and would be like Luke Skywalker getting mentor ship from Darth Sidious.
So, anyway, I didn’t just want to make points, but rather ask people about their experiences either mentoring someone on a free software project, or being a mentee on a free software project. What did you get out of it? What did you not get out of it that you wish you would have gotten out of it? What do we as a free software community need to get from outside of it, without letting the experience ruin us and taking on some kind of warped value system (like proprietary software and hiding code from people for money)