11–20 of 146 posts
Anecdotally, I look at the public repos of any company advertising a job I'm interested in before I apply, so open source certainly attracts some class of developers. The problem is the assumption that people who do that are "better" in some way. I've known some brilliant engineers who don't care at all for open source code; they wrote great code that no one besides the customer would ever see or use. That doesn't ma…
Anecdotally, I look at the public repos of any company advertising a job I'm interested in before I apply, so open source certainly attracts some class of developers. The problem is the assumption that people who do that are "better" in some way. I've known some brilliant engineers who don't care at all for open source code; they wrote great code that no one besides the customer would ever see or use. That doesn't ma…
The obvious irony here is those "brilliant" engineers will use open source code even though they don't care for it.
> They want to work in the open because it creates some visibility to them
> The best companies align business needs with the desires of individual contributors (Engineers) to create their personal brand
> Smart developers like to hang out with smart code. When you open source useful code, you attract talent.
Some of these may play some factor when choosing a company but honestly I think its very small and/or confounding with the underlying factors. More likely IMHO is that companies with an open and communicative culture, where people and processes are transparent, and where work is iterative and agile, tend to open source more code b/c it fits perfectly in that culture. I think Engineers in turn are probably more attracted to that culture as opposed to classically hierarchical, bureaucratic, structured monolithic organizations (which also tend to open source less code b/c it doesn't fit their culture).
There is a line you can draw in the sand here. I usually define it in terms of the Product; I don't believe companies should feel compelled, or even desire to, open source code which directly relates to the product they're trying to sell. The number of companies which actually do this are few and far between (Red Hat, Gitlab, others of course). However, companies should desire to open source code which supports their…
There is a line you can draw in the sand here. I usually define it in terms of the Product; I don't believe companies should feel compelled, or even desire to, open source code which directly relates to the product they're trying to sell. The number of companies which actually do this are few and far between (Red Hat, Gitlab, others of course). However, companies should desire to open source code which supports their…
I think this is hyperbole. Go look at, say, Atlassian's open source code: https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/atlassian-maven-enforcer-rul...
Or https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/confluence-react-components
Or https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/confluence-threaddump-plugin
The thing about "guarantees" is they only take a single counter example to disprove.
I was listening to a friend's music podcast tonight and they were talking about how industry will seize on any shred of creativity so that they can use it to sell cars, and this contributes to people getting defensive about the things they like becoming popular. There is a latent fear that just over the horizon, some marketing asshole is waiting to get their hands on something that is meaningful to you, in order to a…
A company’s OSS is an excellent reflection of the people, decision making processes and culture that permeates it. Look at React, Go etc. They all heavily embed the founding company’s DNA, from the design of the tool, branding, blog posts, contributor engagement, build system, everything.
Sell open source software 'ghostwriting' services
It makes an engineer look good to have solid commits to an open source project on their github profile. The people who actually make the bulk of these commits put in tons of (at times thankless) free labor.
Create a grey market for open source software contributors to sell their diffs (that they've already written and actually entail useful contributions to their project) to some rich lazy wannabe engineers to submit to the repo, and get credit for. Bulk discounts for corporations!
It would get OSS devs more money, which is good, but is lying which is bad.
So here's some of the reason's they give for why Engineers want to work on Open Source: > They want to work in the open because it creates some visibility to them > The best companies align business needs with the desires of individual contributors (Engineers) to create their personal brand > Smart developers like to hang out with smart code. When you open source useful code, you attract talent. Some of these may pla…
Anecdotally, I look at the public repos of any company advertising a job I'm interested in before I apply, so open source certainly attracts some class of developers. The problem is the assumption that people who do that are "better" in some way. I've known some brilliant engineers who don't care at all for open source code; they wrote great code that no one besides the customer would ever see or use. That doesn't ma…
>I've known some brilliant engineers who don't care at all for open source code The obvious irony here is those "brilliant" engineers will use open source code even though they don't care for it.
Not every project is web.
I was listening to a friend's music podcast tonight and they were talking about how industry will seize on any shred of creativity so that they can use it to sell cars, and this contributes to people getting defensive about the things they like becoming popular. There is a latent fear that just over the horizon, some marketing asshole is waiting to get their hands on something that is meaningful to you, in order to a…
It’s really difficult to have your engineering quality or culture NOT reflected in your open source projects. What are you going to do, keep the regular coders locked in the basement working on CRUD apps and a penthouse full of cool evangelist programmers writing OSS for no good reason? A company’s OSS is an excellent reflection of the people, decision making processes and culture that permeates it. Look at React, Go…