[jaredklewis]

We definitely agree on this point. Different licenses select for different things.

It is an annoying problem to have, but if your goal is to be able to support yourself by working on your open source project full time (not saying this has to be or should be everyone’s goal), then having big tech engineers nagging you is probably a good problem to have.

[swiftcoder]

Honestly haven't seen many open-source maintainers convert a BigTech downstream into recurring revenue. I'm sure it does happen, but its far from the norm

[Aurornis]

If your project gets adopted by Big Tech then your market rate as an engineer just went way up.

It’s a huge badge of honor and a rare accomplishment. You’re thinking too directly if you can’t imagine how having your OSS project adopted by Big Tech isn’t a career boost.

[zelphirkalt]

Maybe it can happen, but ask the people maintaining open source projects long term, how much it helped them pass silly leetcode interviews, which companies insist must be done, even if you have a golden track record.

[notpushkin]

“Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but you can’t invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off.”

https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768

[Aurornis]

Please see his follow up comments years later where he reflects on the situation and agrees that he should not have been hired at that time.

He posted that in the heat of the moment while angry, but they didn’t literally reject him for a single LeetCode problem. He admits that he was just not at a point where being hired into a FAANG job would have been a good move.

That one Tweet has fueled years of internet rage from people who didn’t get the whole story, though.

[Aurornis]

I know people maintaining open source projects long term and getting FAANG adoption is a dream come true. That’s why I posted it.

I’ve also worked at companies where people who write OSS have been recruited with comp packages that would be hard to get even at FAANG because their OSS work was crucial to the company.

[swiftcoder]

Maybe in specific fields this is true, but a lot of folks in Big Tech view open source as where developers who couldn't hack the interviews end up (they also hold a pretty similar view of startup engineers, unless they are ex-FAANG)