| Beatniks. That's what we'll get. The Beats were a genuine movement of talented, hard working literary types. They were hip. They were cool. They were who everyone wanted to be, so people started emulating their dress, their mannerisms, their speach. But they were not driven by the same passion. Their motivation was different. Ginsberg said of the Beatniks: "If beatniks and not illuminated Beat poets overrun this country, they will have been created not by Kerouac but by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash man." If we let companies continue to use GitHub as a hiring tool, the OSS community will gradually become overrun by people attempting to achieve the same success as the OSS pioneers by mimicking their actions...but lacking their same motivation. It's hard for me to say this. I like GitHub. I like Open Source. I am proud of what little I have managed to contribute to that community, and I think it is to my advantage if a company considers my GitHub profile when making a hiring decision. That said...I'd rather give up that advantage in exchange for keeping GitHub as an open community to share source, instead of a cauldron for the latest start up founders to pluck their next engineering hire from. |
The people ahead of the curve have to be more motivated, but if we get more people sharing, more eyes to find and fix bugs, more people from other walks of life that understand a bit more of the hacker mentality, more acceptance of sharing code as a normal part of life, then the world is a better place.
Yes, it's a shame that not everyone who plays the piano has the dedication and vision of Rachmaninov, or that everyone who paints is Picasso, but I think the world is a better place for amateurs and dilettantes. Sure, we'd perhaps have better art if it were restricted to those who must, but we have a better society because those who are moderately interested can.