> Honestly, I was less than half as useful as the current crop of robots and they still tolerated (in fact, encouraged) my involvement.

Don’t sell yourself short. External contributors are extremely valuable as they are often users and provide real world validation of a need for whatever they are contributing. They also retain any knowledge for any feedback they receive that they can apply to future contributions. And they also become advocates for that software, helping it grow its user base.

LLMs, not so much.