I want to contribute

[slacker_x]

I am looking for a place to start real world open source programming. I don't have very little practical programming experience. Any suggestions where I should look for a project to start out on?

Even if it is something that is already finished. I just want to be able to look over some C source code to see how things are done in the real world.

I realize this is pretty vague. I'm looking for any kind of advice.

[mrBen]

The first place to start is a small project that interests you. Always go for something that 'scratches a personal itch'. Perhaps even a panel applet, something like that. The best place to go is either sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/) or freshmeat (http://freshmeat.net/) to look for projects needing help. If you're just starting out, then why not start by offering to write some documentation for a project, or by taking an early alpha/beta project and submitting some bug reports, all the while learning how the code works. Then you move on to submitting patches, and pretty soon you might find that you have an itch which isn't scratched by an existing project, and you'll start one of your own!

At least, I'm told that's the way it works ;)

HTH