I lack the experience to secure any sort of internship Isn't that the point of internships, to give experience to those without any? As far as open source goes, if you don't think you have the ability to contribute read the source until you feel like you understand what is going on in the project. If you still feel like you can't contribute to a project then try to come up with an ancillary project, like a gui front end for a DB project or some sort of convenience tool.