[luu]

When I look at the best programmers I know, none have them have done any open source work whatsoever. This group of people ranges from IBM fellows who created some of the earliest minicomputers to IMO medalists who are unbelievably fast problem solvers. I'm not going to say that's a generalizeable statement. It's not, and that's the point -- it's a side effect of spending a career working in teams where people care more about playing with their kids or doing research or whatever than open source.

It's not even that they don't work on projects in their spare time. They do, but they're not part of open source culture, where people share things by default. They're satisfied with having made the thing itself, and they're not going to put their hardware or software project on github any sooner than they're going to make a website for the house they built from scratch.

If you work at an open source shop and hire with this attitude, all you're going to do is make sure that you have a monoculture in this dimension. That's not the worst thing in the world, but it filters out people who don't particularly care about open source, which is the majority of programmers. If that's a moral imperative for you, I don't have any objection to that. Otherwise, I don't see why you'd want to do this.

[Nursie]

Agree. Very much.

Not everyone has a huge body of work they can put out there in the world of FOSS for a vast variety of reasons. Of the two best programmers I know, one is active and publishes, the other is a guy you would kill to have on any team, but whose work is all in pursuit of his closed source job.

[feca]

You have probably seen code written by the best programmers you know, and I guess you are comparing their work with the code in open source projects. As the rest of us can't see their code, it's impossible to agree with you, so we can only trust you blindly. But "trust" with something so technical is a bad criteria, and that's why open source software is good for showing your approach to problem solving and your programming style.

I think the idea of "doing open source work" sounds a bit disproportionate. At least to me. Instead, think about people sharing some small tools they have built for themselves. Even if they work for IBM, they should be able to customize their environment by tweaking some tool or writing a script to make their lives easier. They only have to share that code, not to show off but to help others with similar problems.

[colin_mccabe]

"Playing with your kids" is not mutually exclusive with doing open source work. Linus Torvalds (of Linux fame) is a father and so is Doug Cutting, founder of Hadoop.

"Doing research" is not mutually exclusive with doing open source work either. In fact, I think these days, I would be suspicious of a systems software research project that didn't release the code. A lot of systems software research projects use Linux or some other open source code base as a starting point, since re-inventing the wheel is not very conducive to publishing quickly.

It's pretty obvious why companies would want to look at open source contributions. They show that someone works well on a team, is motivated, and can write code. Of course, they're not ever going to be the only thing companies consider.

It's not even that they don't work on projects in their spare time. They do, but they're not part of open source culture, where people share things by default. They're satisfied with having made the thing itself, and they're not going to put their hardware or software project on github any sooner than they're going to make a website for the house they built from scratch.

How do you know they work on projects in their spare time? Is it because they shared them with you?

[hibbelig]

> "Playing with your kids" is not mutually exclusive with doing open source work. Linus Torvalds (of Linux fame) is a father and so is Doug Cutting, founder of Hadoop.

I think the context here is doing Open Source work in one's spare time. And I guess that Linus does it mostly during the daytime. (I think his diving software thing has probably been done in the spare time, though.)