Hide your real name in Open Source

On one hand I understand what's being said, but on the other hand I'm not sure the author is paying attention to the endgame here. So you hide your open source work, or charity work and get a high paying job at an investment bank -- an investment bank that's worried that you might not be "committed to the job" if you work on open source.

Does the author understand what kind of "commitment" they are talking about? Do they understand why investment banks pay the kind of money they pay for software developers?

If it were me, they'd be damn right that I'm not "committed". Why do you write open source software? Why do you work for charities? Because you are free to do so!

In my youth, I gave up my freedom in order to work. I will never do that again. It was a mistake for me. I think it is probably a mistake for anyone who loves their freedom. It's a mistake for people who want to be free to help others when others need help, not when the office allows it (which will be never, BTW).

Yeah, you can sell out, and for some people it's probably incredibly worth it. But if you judge the value of your life by what you do rather than what you receive in compensation, then I really don't think you'll be happy with that trade-off.

YMMV.

This sounds like the investment banks are reacting to the Goldman Sachs case against Sergey Aleynikov, either they want to avoid someone “stealing” their code, or they just don’t want to have to deal with that kind of situation. It’s certainly not right, but if you work in that sector, it’s something you need to be concerned about and take these kinds of attitudes into consideration.

> But if they are flooded with applications, no they won't; they can safely bet that there is another applicant with similar qualifications and more accessible OSS presence.

That is quite unlikely. You are overestimating amount of programmers with non minimal oss presence. And, if they are flooded they won't search you by name. They might maybe click on cv link.

> That's just a few different shades of "weird" as a person.

That is small price for having control, really.

I never found a company which would judge OSS contributions negatively and I've seen quite a few of them (I tend to change job very often and I've 10+ years of working experience).

I am wondering whether the author of the blogpost considered the option that what they were telling him was just an excuse. Maybe the problem is not his OSS but the fact that the author behaviour in the community is not exactly as brilliant as he may think and that made him a controversial figure?

Of course, being anonymous means you can start any flame you like, treat people as you want and get away with it; not sure that that's the best way to achieve less toxic communities anyway.

> Most didn't.

Directly counter to my experience.

> But you didn't use your name as your nick did you? I never did.

Many of us did, many didn't but left their real name readily accessible by e.g. making our e-mail visible and having Finger enabled.

> The same thing with BBS.

Most of the BBS's I used asked for real names, and from meeting people at BBS meets I know most of the people I spoke to on BBS's were truthful.

> No. Even before the media generated panic ( of primarily AOL ), you weren't encouraged to use your real name. Of course after you talked to people and got to know them, nothing stopped you from exchanging numbers. But that wasn't the norm.

Again, completely counter to my experience. You weren't "encouraged" in most cases, so much as copied what other people did, and most people around me used our real names all over the place.

> I can't believe you brought up irc. There is a reason why in irc you used your "nick". The culture of irc was anonymity. IRC clients and many channels discouraged using your real name.

Not the ones I spent most of my time on. That became more prevalent later, and in certain circles. Certainly if you were spreading warez etc., yes.