10 ms·

Fossjobs: A website for free and open-source software jobs

607 points by rendx 10y ago

rendx 10y ago
https://www.twitter.com/fossjobs_net https://www.twitter.com/fossjobs_net https://www.facebook.com/fossjobs.net/ https://www.facebook.com/fossjobs.net/
yogeshdeveloper 10y ago
Will FOSS jobs will post job openings in India?
- mo 10y ago
  Hi! A lot of the jobs on fossjobs.net are remote work. In fact, you can directly see the job's location on the job listing. It's definitely worthwhile reaching out to the project to ask. And of course we would list openings in India, as we would list foss jobs in any place. If you hear of any, please let us know! The easiest way to do that is to cc @fossjobs_net on Twitter.
  - joe563323 10y ago
    Thankyou, Thankyou so so much. Now i can work overtime without feeling bad about spending my time making some bad people rich.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
djmashko2 10y ago
Nice, just posted a job! Hope they verify my email soon :]
tannhaeuser 10y ago
Congrats, there seem to be interesting offerings and employers on fossjobs.net. What are the criteria to be listed on fossjobs.net? Right now, I'm also seeing some admin/devops jobs that are only related to F/OSS insofar as eg. Linux is being used, but won't contribute to anything distributable under F/OSS licenses.
- ecma 10y ago
  I'm assuming it's for jobs at FOSS shops, not necessarily shops which publish all their stuff with free software licenses. The latter sounds too niche although I'd love to see a board like that exist.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    That could just be a tag in fossjobs. No need for a whole site.
- mo 10y ago
  (Hi! This is Moritz, who currently maintains the fossjobs site) It's hard to define clear criteria. We do want to avoid jobs where people just "use" FOSS. The focus is definitely paid positions where you /contribute/ to FOSS in some way. Besides obvious developer positions, that might be administrative or sysop jobs at FOSS projects/orgs or other non-profit environments, more than sysop jobs at random web startups.
  - r3bl 10y ago
    Since you're currently maintaining the site, you might want to consider splitting "Serbia and Montenegro" into two separate countries, since they've been independent from each other for over a decade now.
    - mo 10y ago
      Done. Thanks!
    - dualogy 10y ago
      > for over a decade now That countries-list must have been a FOSS project without a maintainer..
  - waldir 10y ago
    The repository and website should have these criteria mentioned explicitly. I'll probably send a PR to that effect :) ps - amazing initiative, congrats!
bjelkeman-again 10y ago
Thanks, we will be trying that out for our openings in the developer team.
navs 10y ago
Wow this is great! I've grown tired of the typical agency world of billable hours and conversions. Looking forward to seeing more jobs posted across the gamut of IT. Also happy to see this working without javascript or unnecessary marketing tags. It's refreshing.
sunilkumarc 10y ago
When they say 'full time' in the job description, how many hours do they expect us to spend time on those projects?
- mo 10y ago
  If you find a job that looks interesting, it's always a good idea to get in touch and find out the details and how much it is up for negotiations. Quite often there's details in the description, and if not, I would expect full time to mean something around 40 hours per week. It helps to look at the cultural background and where the organization is based. Especially benefits (vacation days, sick days, health insurance) vary quite much between different countries.
lsmod 10y ago
Removed.
- mo 10y ago
  Patches welcome. This is a hobby side project, and it does its job. (pun intended)
  - mattt416 10y ago
    Help us hack on Tramcar (https://github.com/wfhio/tramcar https://github.com/wfhio/tramcar). It's still very early days, but we'd love to see others starting use and contribute to this software! :)
mryan 10y ago
Some of the jobs listed on the site date from 2013 - it seems as though some housekeeping is required.
- mo 10y ago
  No. Of course it makes little sense to apply to old jobs, but one of the goals here is to demonstrate that there _are_ actually paid jobs in FOSS. We keep old job listings around on purpose, also because it helps to find interesting organizations which you can then get in touch with.
  - DocTomoe 10y ago
    On the other hand, if the number of jobs in recent time has to be padded with job openings in ancient history, is there really a substainable number of paid jobs in FOSS?
    - mo 10y ago
      How does this matter? What do you mean by "sustainable"? One job is a job. Two jobs is two jobs.
      - jldugger 10y ago
        Sustainable as in "I can make a career of this" or "if this particular project wanes, I can always hop over to one of the many other projects." If you pad your listings, people will assume you need to because there _aren't_ many such jobs. Moreso over time as the ratio of filled listings to active recruitment grows -- if all visitors ever see are jobs that no longer accept applications, they will not come away with a positive outlook on the field.
        mo 10y ago
        Again: We am not "padding" anything. The site exists since 2012, and we keep old job listings around, as an archive and to help find interesting potential employers that may have jobs apart of what is listed. There's an open ticket about "fading them out" a little to make it even more obvious. There's plenty of recent jobs listed, so your point about "only ever seeing jobs that no longer accept applications" is moot. Also, subscribe to the RSS feed (or Twitter/Facebook), and "all you will ever see will be fresh, open positions". It's like arguing that a news site should delete yesterday's news instead of keeping an archive, because "you're only interested in today". As for your "sustainability" and "career building", I disagree there too, but that's for a different conversation.
oever 10y ago
The market for FOSS programmers will grow in Europe. A report has just been published that says “open source is important for the future of the European software industry.” [1] In the UK, Government Digital Service already has a strict policy that software it writes should be open. Being able to write FOSS in your day job is a wonderful boon . Especially in government it will help offset the lower salaries of the public sector. [1] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ec-study-recommends-policies-emphasise-open-source https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ec-study-rec...
- jon-wood 10y ago
  I wonder how much of an incentive writing open source at somewhere like GDS actually is. While its certainly nice to develop in the open how much of what you write is actually useful in future jobs?
  - JonAtkinson 10y ago
    Surely the idea is that it is useful to your future colleagues?
  - wiz21c 10y ago
    If I could work on GPL'ed software, I'd do it just for the sake of the political argument (yes, I'm that far :-) )
    - fithisux 10y ago
      Me too. (yes me too)
- user5994461 10y ago
  > In the UK, Government Digital Service already has a strict policy that software it writes should be open. And they pay contractors 1000 a day for that. Why the hell would anyone want to work for open source projects that can't pay for their housing and food.
jlebrech 10y ago
would any of those be useful for someone who's relocated to somewhere with a lower cost of living?
Perceptes 10y ago
What a great resource! I used weworkremotely.com to find my current job. A combination of the two would be perfect for me, but I see that many of the jobs are already remote. I'm also pleased to see the term "Programmer" used instead of "Software Engineer." I always identify myself as the former.
- Cthulhu_ 10y ago
  I identify as the latter; "programmer" narrows your job title down to someone that writes code, while the latter opens up the full scala involved in software development. Most time is spent not on writing code, but talking about it - this is even more true in a lot of OS projects I've seen, where there can be very long mailing list discussions about changing small pieces of code. And besides that, there's also things like server administration, datacenter automation, data modelling, analytics configuration and statistics processing, knowledge sharing / transfer (blogs, conferences if that's your thing), etc.
MaxKK 10y ago
Just posted an ad. Great page!
Outpox 10y ago
I'll be using this for my next job, thanks!
joe4353444 10y ago
Wow, this is the coolest idea. I am going to find and collect all the resources to get prepared for a remote work Foss job.
sinaa 10y ago
Great idea! The following text could be improved though (looks as if it is suggesting to recommend a fake job to a friend): "Is this job ad fake? Report it! or Recommend to a friend"
- mpeg 10y ago
  It weeds out the competition.
aylons 10y ago
You mentioned open hardware in an answer to another comment, but I see no obvious category for a hardware developer in the menu! "Programmer" or "designer" do not quite fit the bill.
- mo 10y ago
  What category would you suggest to add? If it's about actual development, I think "Programmer" will do just fine. I am a bit reluctant to add a new category specifically for this.
  - aylons 10y ago
    I'd suggest "Hardware". It is niche, but without it, it really does not send any signals that Open Hardware jobs are welcome. A hardware designer definitely is not a "Programmer". (Edited for clarity)
mindw0rk 10y ago
Where did you get your initial feed of job offers? I can see offers that are 4 years old
- mo 10y ago
  It's simple, and you can help: I am adding jobs that I come across or that people submit. It's a collaborative action. Job listings from 2012 were added in 2012. It's not a new site. Of course we don't add old expired jobs.
laumars 10y ago
The first link I clicked on (the UK section[1]) was listed entire with jobs dated 2015. Even assuming some of those companies still have openings, seeing results that old immediately discourages me from investigating further on your resource. So it might be worth hiding expired positions from a UX perspective. [1] https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in/United-Kingdom/ https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in/United-Kingdom/ edit: The 2nd link I click on had jobs ranging from 2014 to 2012. I respect the effort you're putting into this curated list but displaying jobs that old is a little silly.
- smhenderson 10y ago
  Indeed. I clicked the US link and the newest post is from August 2016. And that's the only one from 2016. The next newest is from August 2015 and they quickly get much older than that as you move down the list. I guess the one benefit is seeing a list of potential employers of FOSS developers even if it means researching current possibilities elsewhere...
  - phkahler 10y ago
    As I write your post is 7 hours old. I saw 4 posted in the US for 2017 so perhaps being on HN is getting them some attention. But yes, there were things from 2012.
    - smhenderson 10y ago
      That's great! As mentioned my initial take away was at least it was a good place to start researching companies that actually have FOSS positions available whose focus is on contributions and not just using/understanding FOSS. After my comment I read more and it looks like they want more contributions and, I agree, being on HN probably helped!
- jancborchardt 10y ago
  If you’re up for contributing a simple timeout or something like that I guess the developers would appreciate that a lot :) https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/
josteink 10y ago
A site like this would be nice, but it would need a steady team of volunteers to source job listings. I suspect most job openings and offers are launched on country-specific websites and systems, many which probably (even intentionally) are locked in and lack a public API. Right now, checking Norway, there are zero listing. That may be true (I wouldn't know), but from that alone I'm guessing this site does not know how to source jobs from the "typical" Norwegian employment sites. So who are going to bother to volunteer for a site which lands everyone else a job but themselves? It seems like a hard thing to get right.
- mo 10y ago
  Well, what about me? I _am_ volunteering, and a couple of others CC @fossjobs.net on Twitter whenever they come across a job offer. Yes, you are right, this site depends on volunteers. So what? Wikipedia does as well. Why would anyone contribute their knowledge to something that does not help them? Well, maybe it will one day. We don't have to start a debate about why anyone would volunteer anything, but I find your reasoning pretty self-centered. Also, you're arguing as if this was a mere proposal for a job site that lists FOSS jobs. No, it's not. Is is an actual site that lists FOSS jobs, and it works. And don't forget about FOSS companies/NGOs who are looking for talent. Some of them actually like to post their job listings at our site, and do so with a very self-centered desire: To fill a position, potentially with less noise than using one of the other platforms. Why would FOSS developers want to look at all the depressing proprietary jobs on other platforms? :)
dandelion_lover 10y ago
There is also https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs
- mo 10y ago
  ... which can be a great resource to find jobs appropriate also for fossjobs.net. but: "usual price $250/30 days"
foxtail 10y ago
the link support under JOB CATEGORIES is too broad
jwildeboer 10y ago
I guess the Red Hat job openings are not FOSS enough? ;-) (disclaimer: I work at Red Hat, happy to hook site maintainer up with our team to coordinate)
- mo 10y ago
  I would say it depends on the specific job. :) Happy to talk about it, I am just a bit afraid that it will flood the site and make it hard to see other offers.
  - jwildeboer 10y ago
    I think the majority of the jobs in our technology category would qualify: https://www.redhat.com/en/jobs/categories/technology https://www.redhat.com/en/jobs/categories/technology Again, happy to coordinate a direct contact. You can get me at jwildebo [at] redhat dot com
- davexunit 10y ago
  Is it possible to work at Red Hat without using any proprietary software, let alone write any?
  - ehayes 10y ago
    Not only possible, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to work exclusively on closed-source at Red Hat.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    It's not possible to work ANYWHERE without using proprietary software, running on patended hardware, coming partially from China.
    - davexunit 10y ago
      Hardware and patents are both unrelated to my question.
- 10y ago
gghh 10y ago
The markup syntax to post jobs is referred as "textile" (which I don't know -- is it a flavor of markdown?) and the help page for it points to http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/ http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/ which in turns redirect to the quite unrelated page http://www.booked.net/textism.html http://www.booked.net/textism.html Would you please fix the dead link? Great job board otherwise, I was about to post a job (I work at SUSE, almost everything we do is FOSS).
- vertex-four 10y ago
  Textile is a syntax invented for the Textpattern blogging system.
- minitech 10y ago
  That’s not an unrelated page; it describes Textile’s syntax in a column on the right and lets you try it interactively. (No, it’s not a flavour of Markdown.)
em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
Fortunately the site does use FOSS software itself: https://www.fossjobs.net/about/ https://www.fossjobs.net/about/
bigato 10y ago
It would be interesting to have an option to pay for desired new features in existing projects. You could call it "bid for code" or something: people who need a certain feature in an open-source project would commit to paying some amount of money for it. Other people interested in the same feature could also join. A bit similar to a kickstarter, but for feature requests. Developers would choose what to work on, depending on how much money is being offered. Is there something like this out there already? This could be a feature in this site or a completely new site if someone wants to take on this idea. Github should offer this option!
- severine 10y ago
  Do you mean something like Bountysource? https://www.bountysource.com/ https://www.bountysource.com/
  - bigato 10y ago
    Oh, that's nice, thank you. And it looks like they already have some integration with github: http://blog.bountysource.com/post/48954271533/improved-github-integration-automatically-update http://blog.bountysource.com/post/48954271533/improved-githu...
    - rasjani 10y ago
      Codemill also has github integration but it's not very actively used.
- grumph 10y ago
  I think you are searching for something like this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_bounty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_bounty https://www.bountysource.com/ https://www.bountysource.com/
- buovjaga 10y ago
  Check out the history of such sites, starting from the late 1990s: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software#bounties https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software... Lots of research on bounty sites and other funding platforms: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfundi...
mattt416 10y ago
Added to https://github.com/wfhio/awesome-job-boards https://github.com/wfhio/awesome-job-boards !
joe563323 10y ago
Bug: seraching for partime jobs take to https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/ https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/. ie. https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in//parttime/ https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in//parttime/ takes to https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/ https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/
- jancborchardt 10y ago
  Might be best to report it at https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues :)
  - mo 10y ago
    That's probably https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues/9 https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues/9 :)
specialist 10y ago
I worked on a FOSS project. Part of the Kuali consortia, making software for higher education. I took the job to learn how these kinds of projects work. Specifically, the governance model. Well, it didn't. I wish I understood why. Writing about open sourcing Solaris, I think it was btilly who said that others had the right to fork, but not the power. That describes Kuali perfectly. We consortia members couldn't do anything to help ourselves improve things, like simple bug fixes, without it being a major production. Very disempowering, pretty much the opposite of why I wanted to work on FOSS. We need academic style comparative analysis of FOSS governance models, funding models, project methodologies, etc. Learn from our mistakes, help people in the future.
- jldugger 10y ago
  I figure any percieved inertia in Kuali is a reflection of it's constituents. If all consortia members' IT dept are on an annual upgrade cycle over summer break, there's little incentive to push out daily bug fixes. Plus, I'm guessing Indiana University has outsized influence on the shape of the project, since they founded it. > We need academic style comparative analysis of FOSS governance models, funding models, project methodologies, etc. Learn from our mistakes, help people in the future. I have a book here on my desk: "The business and Economics of Linux and Open Source" by Martin Fink. It's from 2002, and could use an update clearly.
brilliantcode 10y ago
What I'm trying to do with http://letsopensource.com http://letsopensource.com is similar except offer structured incentives for developers that contribute to FOSS.
mxuribe 10y ago
This is such a great concept for a job-seeking site; kudos!
fred_is_fred 10y ago
(from a job posting I saw) "So where do you work?" "Uhhh. Cockroach Labs"
rando832 10y ago
See also: https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs
passivepinetree 10y ago
At the bottom of each job offer, the site asks "Is this job fake?" and then offers "Report it!" or "Recommend to a friend" options. I certainly hope people aren't recommending fake jobs to their friends! That's a funny UX issue.

607 points by rendx 10y ago

rendx 10y ago

https://www.twitter.com/fossjobs_net https://www.twitter.com/fossjobs_net https://www.facebook.com/fossjobs.net/ https://www.facebook.com/fossjobs.net/

yogeshdeveloper 10y ago

Will FOSS jobs will post job openings in India?

mo 10y ago
Hi! A lot of the jobs on fossjobs.net are remote work. In fact, you can directly see the job's location on the job listing. It's definitely worthwhile reaching out to the project to ask. And of course we would list openings in India, as we would list foss jobs in any place. If you hear of any, please let us know! The easiest way to do that is to cc @fossjobs_net on Twitter.
- joe563323 10y ago
  Thankyou, Thankyou so so much. Now i can work overtime without feeling bad about spending my time making some bad people rich.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

djmashko2 10y ago

Nice, just posted a job! Hope they verify my email soon :]

tannhaeuser 10y ago

Congrats, there seem to be interesting offerings and employers on fossjobs.net. What are the criteria to be listed on fossjobs.net? Right now, I'm also seeing some admin/devops jobs that are only related to F/OSS insofar as eg. Linux is being used, but won't contribute to anything distributable under F/OSS licenses.

ecma 10y ago
I'm assuming it's for jobs at FOSS shops, not necessarily shops which publish all their stuff with free software licenses. The latter sounds too niche although I'd love to see a board like that exist.
- sametmax 10y ago
  That could just be a tag in fossjobs. No need for a whole site.
mo 10y ago
(Hi! This is Moritz, who currently maintains the fossjobs site) It's hard to define clear criteria. We do want to avoid jobs where people just "use" FOSS. The focus is definitely paid positions where you /contribute/ to FOSS in some way. Besides obvious developer positions, that might be administrative or sysop jobs at FOSS projects/orgs or other non-profit environments, more than sysop jobs at random web startups.
- r3bl 10y ago
  Since you're currently maintaining the site, you might want to consider splitting "Serbia and Montenegro" into two separate countries, since they've been independent from each other for over a decade now.
  - mo 10y ago
    Done. Thanks!
  - dualogy 10y ago
    > for over a decade now That countries-list must have been a FOSS project without a maintainer..
- waldir 10y ago
  The repository and website should have these criteria mentioned explicitly. I'll probably send a PR to that effect :) ps - amazing initiative, congrats!

bjelkeman-again 10y ago

Thanks, we will be trying that out for our openings in the developer team.

navs 10y ago

Wow this is great! I've grown tired of the typical agency world of billable hours and conversions. Looking forward to seeing more jobs posted across the gamut of IT. Also happy to see this working without javascript or unnecessary marketing tags. It's refreshing.

sunilkumarc 10y ago

When they say 'full time' in the job description, how many hours do they expect us to spend time on those projects?

mo 10y ago
If you find a job that looks interesting, it's always a good idea to get in touch and find out the details and how much it is up for negotiations. Quite often there's details in the description, and if not, I would expect full time to mean something around 40 hours per week. It helps to look at the cultural background and where the organization is based. Especially benefits (vacation days, sick days, health insurance) vary quite much between different countries.

lsmod 10y ago

Removed.

mo 10y ago
Patches welcome. This is a hobby side project, and it does its job. (pun intended)
- mattt416 10y ago
  Help us hack on Tramcar (https://github.com/wfhio/tramcar https://github.com/wfhio/tramcar). It's still very early days, but we'd love to see others starting use and contribute to this software! :)

mryan 10y ago

Some of the jobs listed on the site date from 2013 - it seems as though some housekeeping is required.

mo 10y ago
No. Of course it makes little sense to apply to old jobs, but one of the goals here is to demonstrate that there _are_ actually paid jobs in FOSS. We keep old job listings around on purpose, also because it helps to find interesting organizations which you can then get in touch with.
- DocTomoe 10y ago
  On the other hand, if the number of jobs in recent time has to be padded with job openings in ancient history, is there really a substainable number of paid jobs in FOSS?
  - mo 10y ago
    How does this matter? What do you mean by "sustainable"? One job is a job. Two jobs is two jobs.
    - jldugger 10y ago
      Sustainable as in "I can make a career of this" or "if this particular project wanes, I can always hop over to one of the many other projects." If you pad your listings, people will assume you need to because there _aren't_ many such jobs. Moreso over time as the ratio of filled listings to active recruitment grows -- if all visitors ever see are jobs that no longer accept applications, they will not come away with a positive outlook on the field.
      - mo 10y ago
        Again: We am not "padding" anything. The site exists since 2012, and we keep old job listings around, as an archive and to help find interesting potential employers that may have jobs apart of what is listed. There's an open ticket about "fading them out" a little to make it even more obvious. There's plenty of recent jobs listed, so your point about "only ever seeing jobs that no longer accept applications" is moot. Also, subscribe to the RSS feed (or Twitter/Facebook), and "all you will ever see will be fresh, open positions". It's like arguing that a news site should delete yesterday's news instead of keeping an archive, because "you're only interested in today". As for your "sustainability" and "career building", I disagree there too, but that's for a different conversation.

oever 10y ago

The market for FOSS programmers will grow in Europe. A report has just been published that says “open source is important for the future of the European software industry.” [1] In the UK, Government Digital Service already has a strict policy that software it writes should be open. Being able to write FOSS in your day job is a wonderful boon . Especially in government it will help offset the lower salaries of the public sector. [1] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ec-study-recommends-policies-emphasise-open-source https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ec-study-rec...

jon-wood 10y ago
I wonder how much of an incentive writing open source at somewhere like GDS actually is. While its certainly nice to develop in the open how much of what you write is actually useful in future jobs?
- JonAtkinson 10y ago
  Surely the idea is that it is useful to your future colleagues?
- wiz21c 10y ago
  If I could work on GPL'ed software, I'd do it just for the sake of the political argument (yes, I'm that far :-) )
  - fithisux 10y ago
    Me too. (yes me too)
user5994461 10y ago
> In the UK, Government Digital Service already has a strict policy that software it writes should be open. And they pay contractors 1000 a day for that. Why the hell would anyone want to work for open source projects that can't pay for their housing and food.

jlebrech 10y ago

would any of those be useful for someone who's relocated to somewhere with a lower cost of living?

Perceptes 10y ago

What a great resource! I used weworkremotely.com to find my current job. A combination of the two would be perfect for me, but I see that many of the jobs are already remote. I'm also pleased to see the term "Programmer" used instead of "Software Engineer." I always identify myself as the former.

Cthulhu_ 10y ago
I identify as the latter; "programmer" narrows your job title down to someone that writes code, while the latter opens up the full scala involved in software development. Most time is spent not on writing code, but talking about it - this is even more true in a lot of OS projects I've seen, where there can be very long mailing list discussions about changing small pieces of code. And besides that, there's also things like server administration, datacenter automation, data modelling, analytics configuration and statistics processing, knowledge sharing / transfer (blogs, conferences if that's your thing), etc.

MaxKK 10y ago

Just posted an ad. Great page!

Outpox 10y ago

I'll be using this for my next job, thanks!

joe4353444 10y ago

Wow, this is the coolest idea. I am going to find and collect all the resources to get prepared for a remote work Foss job.

sinaa 10y ago

Great idea! The following text could be improved though (looks as if it is suggesting to recommend a fake job to a friend): "Is this job ad fake? Report it! or Recommend to a friend"

mpeg 10y ago
It weeds out the competition.

aylons 10y ago

You mentioned open hardware in an answer to another comment, but I see no obvious category for a hardware developer in the menu! "Programmer" or "designer" do not quite fit the bill.

mo 10y ago
What category would you suggest to add? If it's about actual development, I think "Programmer" will do just fine. I am a bit reluctant to add a new category specifically for this.
- aylons 10y ago
  I'd suggest "Hardware". It is niche, but without it, it really does not send any signals that Open Hardware jobs are welcome. A hardware designer definitely is not a "Programmer". (Edited for clarity)

mindw0rk 10y ago

Where did you get your initial feed of job offers? I can see offers that are 4 years old

mo 10y ago
It's simple, and you can help: I am adding jobs that I come across or that people submit. It's a collaborative action. Job listings from 2012 were added in 2012. It's not a new site. Of course we don't add old expired jobs.

laumars 10y ago

The first link I clicked on (the UK section[1]) was listed entire with jobs dated 2015. Even assuming some of those companies still have openings, seeing results that old immediately discourages me from investigating further on your resource. So it might be worth hiding expired positions from a UX perspective. [1] https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in/United-Kingdom/ https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in/United-Kingdom/ edit: The 2nd link I click on had jobs ranging from 2014 to 2012. I respect the effort you're putting into this curated list but displaying jobs that old is a little silly.

smhenderson 10y ago
Indeed. I clicked the US link and the newest post is from August 2016. And that's the only one from 2016. The next newest is from August 2015 and they quickly get much older than that as you move down the list. I guess the one benefit is seeing a list of potential employers of FOSS developers even if it means researching current possibilities elsewhere...
- phkahler 10y ago
  As I write your post is 7 hours old. I saw 4 posted in the US for 2017 so perhaps being on HN is getting them some attention. But yes, there were things from 2012.
  - smhenderson 10y ago
    That's great! As mentioned my initial take away was at least it was a good place to start researching companies that actually have FOSS positions available whose focus is on contributions and not just using/understanding FOSS. After my comment I read more and it looks like they want more contributions and, I agree, being on HN probably helped!
jancborchardt 10y ago
If you’re up for contributing a simple timeout or something like that I guess the developers would appreciate that a lot :) https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/

josteink 10y ago

A site like this would be nice, but it would need a steady team of volunteers to source job listings. I suspect most job openings and offers are launched on country-specific websites and systems, many which probably (even intentionally) are locked in and lack a public API. Right now, checking Norway, there are zero listing. That may be true (I wouldn't know), but from that alone I'm guessing this site does not know how to source jobs from the "typical" Norwegian employment sites. So who are going to bother to volunteer for a site which lands everyone else a job but themselves? It seems like a hard thing to get right.

mo 10y ago
Well, what about me? I _am_ volunteering, and a couple of others CC @fossjobs.net on Twitter whenever they come across a job offer. Yes, you are right, this site depends on volunteers. So what? Wikipedia does as well. Why would anyone contribute their knowledge to something that does not help them? Well, maybe it will one day. We don't have to start a debate about why anyone would volunteer anything, but I find your reasoning pretty self-centered. Also, you're arguing as if this was a mere proposal for a job site that lists FOSS jobs. No, it's not. Is is an actual site that lists FOSS jobs, and it works. And don't forget about FOSS companies/NGOs who are looking for talent. Some of them actually like to post their job listings at our site, and do so with a very self-centered desire: To fill a position, potentially with less noise than using one of the other platforms. Why would FOSS developers want to look at all the depressing proprietary jobs on other platforms? :)

dandelion_lover 10y ago

There is also https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs

mo 10y ago
... which can be a great resource to find jobs appropriate also for fossjobs.net. but: "usual price $250/30 days"

foxtail 10y ago

the link support under JOB CATEGORIES is too broad

jwildeboer 10y ago

I guess the Red Hat job openings are not FOSS enough? ;-) (disclaimer: I work at Red Hat, happy to hook site maintainer up with our team to coordinate)

mo 10y ago
I would say it depends on the specific job. :) Happy to talk about it, I am just a bit afraid that it will flood the site and make it hard to see other offers.
- jwildeboer 10y ago
  I think the majority of the jobs in our technology category would qualify: https://www.redhat.com/en/jobs/categories/technology https://www.redhat.com/en/jobs/categories/technology Again, happy to coordinate a direct contact. You can get me at jwildebo [at] redhat dot com
davexunit 10y ago
Is it possible to work at Red Hat without using any proprietary software, let alone write any?
- ehayes 10y ago
  Not only possible, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to work exclusively on closed-source at Red Hat.
- user5994461 10y ago
  It's not possible to work ANYWHERE without using proprietary software, running on patended hardware, coming partially from China.
  - davexunit 10y ago
    Hardware and patents are both unrelated to my question.
10y ago

gghh 10y ago

The markup syntax to post jobs is referred as "textile" (which I don't know -- is it a flavor of markdown?) and the help page for it points to http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/ http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/ which in turns redirect to the quite unrelated page http://www.booked.net/textism.html http://www.booked.net/textism.html Would you please fix the dead link? Great job board otherwise, I was about to post a job (I work at SUSE, almost everything we do is FOSS).

vertex-four 10y ago
Textile is a syntax invented for the Textpattern blogging system.
minitech 10y ago
That’s not an unrelated page; it describes Textile’s syntax in a column on the right and lets you try it interactively. (No, it’s not a flavour of Markdown.)

em3rgent0rdr 10y ago

Fortunately the site does use FOSS software itself: https://www.fossjobs.net/about/ https://www.fossjobs.net/about/

bigato 10y ago

It would be interesting to have an option to pay for desired new features in existing projects. You could call it "bid for code" or something: people who need a certain feature in an open-source project would commit to paying some amount of money for it. Other people interested in the same feature could also join. A bit similar to a kickstarter, but for feature requests. Developers would choose what to work on, depending on how much money is being offered. Is there something like this out there already? This could be a feature in this site or a completely new site if someone wants to take on this idea. Github should offer this option!

severine 10y ago
Do you mean something like Bountysource? https://www.bountysource.com/ https://www.bountysource.com/
- bigato 10y ago
  Oh, that's nice, thank you. And it looks like they already have some integration with github: http://blog.bountysource.com/post/48954271533/improved-github-integration-automatically-update http://blog.bountysource.com/post/48954271533/improved-githu...
  - rasjani 10y ago
    Codemill also has github integration but it's not very actively used.
grumph 10y ago
I think you are searching for something like this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_bounty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_bounty https://www.bountysource.com/ https://www.bountysource.com/
buovjaga 10y ago
Check out the history of such sites, starting from the late 1990s: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software#bounties https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software... Lots of research on bounty sites and other funding platforms: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfundi...

mattt416 10y ago

Added to https://github.com/wfhio/awesome-job-boards https://github.com/wfhio/awesome-job-boards !

joe563323 10y ago

Bug: seraching for partime jobs take to https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/ https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/. ie. https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in//parttime/ https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in//parttime/ takes to https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/ https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/

jancborchardt 10y ago
Might be best to report it at https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues :)
- mo 10y ago
  That's probably https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues/9 https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues/9 :)

specialist 10y ago

I worked on a FOSS project. Part of the Kuali consortia, making software for higher education. I took the job to learn how these kinds of projects work. Specifically, the governance model. Well, it didn't. I wish I understood why. Writing about open sourcing Solaris, I think it was btilly who said that others had the right to fork, but not the power. That describes Kuali perfectly. We consortia members couldn't do anything to help ourselves improve things, like simple bug fixes, without it being a major production. Very disempowering, pretty much the opposite of why I wanted to work on FOSS. We need academic style comparative analysis of FOSS governance models, funding models, project methodologies, etc. Learn from our mistakes, help people in the future.

jldugger 10y ago
I figure any percieved inertia in Kuali is a reflection of it's constituents. If all consortia members' IT dept are on an annual upgrade cycle over summer break, there's little incentive to push out daily bug fixes. Plus, I'm guessing Indiana University has outsized influence on the shape of the project, since they founded it. > We need academic style comparative analysis of FOSS governance models, funding models, project methodologies, etc. Learn from our mistakes, help people in the future. I have a book here on my desk: "The business and Economics of Linux and Open Source" by Martin Fink. It's from 2002, and could use an update clearly.

brilliantcode 10y ago

What I'm trying to do with http://letsopensource.com http://letsopensource.com is similar except offer structured incentives for developers that contribute to FOSS.

mxuribe 10y ago

This is such a great concept for a job-seeking site; kudos!

fred_is_fred 10y ago

(from a job posting I saw) "So where do you work?" "Uhhh. Cockroach Labs"

rando832 10y ago

See also: https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs

passivepinetree 10y ago

At the bottom of each job offer, the site asks "Is this job fake?" and then offers "Report it!" or "Recommend to a friend" options. I certainly hope people aren't recommending fake jobs to their friends! That's a funny UX issue.