I think the disconnect is that those teams of recruiters are trying to get experienced developers, not just someone who can sling some code together. A lot of

I think the disconnect is that those teams of recruiters are trying to get experienced developers, not just someone who can sling some code together. A lot of FOSS starts as an amateur's project and buds into the full scale projects we see while the maintainers are also growing as software engineers with the project. People start FOSS projects and give them away because the initial market value tends to be negligible until the project has had time to mature and be fleshed out. Something like Linux had almost zero market value years into the project, its still just a "toy" to the market. Just the way I see things, but I can understand your viewpoint as well.