[reactordev]

“People want to create [sic] things that are useful to other people.”

For me, it’s this. So many useful tools and projects helped me when I was getting started that I feel obliged to give back for life. If my abilities came from reading tutorials, books, open source code, etc then shouldn’t I give back? Must everything be for profits? My employer owns me from 9-5 but not my side projects. I can explore other areas of computing with those and share my findings with others. Whether or not you find it useful. I think the idea that if you create a successful open source project, you’re more employable is a farce. You’ll just be more busy. But it depends on the gravity of the project I guess.

From the other side, I look for open source projects from candidates to see if they know how to code. I look at the history and logs, the diffs, and changes. If they don’t have any code out there, I force them into a coding challenge. If you do have code out there, you don’t have to take the challenge. (Fair hiring practice I say)

[acureau]

Could not agree more, this exactly describes my motivation in publishing my own projects. I have benefited from the open-source ecosystem and I want to it to thrive into the future. My salary provides me with a comfortable life, and I doubt I could sell the kind of things I enjoy making.