What open source projects would you recommend as a good place for a starting open source developer? Factors that I think would be important are some obvious ones like well written code and a community that is helpful to newbies. But it might be nice if the code base is such that I can start hacking some small problems without really understanding the details of how everything works.
I'd prefer something that can be developed on Linux using C/C++/Java/Python/Scala.
Trying to pick a project like that will never work because it's not something you're passionate about. What's an open source project that you use daily or enjoy using? Go work with that one.