To speak to the first half of the post, I think the tweets by @betsythemuffin are the most interesting: 1. Whether free-time activities are called "work" or "p

To speak to the first half of the post, I think the tweets by @betsythemuffin are the most interesting: 1. Whether free-time activities are called "work" or "play," the existence of free time to do them in is a privilege. 2. When a time-consuming activity is used as a job selection criterion, it becomes work. I think an apt metaphor is college admissions, where Open Source contribution takes the place of spring break volunteer work in Cambodia (which requires you to be able to spend the thousand dollars for the flight) and lots of after-school clubs and sports (which require you to not work a job during high school to help support your family.) It's a veiled discrimination (and I don't mean discrimination in a loaded way -- I'm not saying people who look for OSS contributions in their employees are closet racists or sexists or anything like that.) At the same time, I have to disagree with the second point; I think a more accurate sentence would be "when a time-consuming activity is required as a job selection criterion, it becomes work." I know plenty of people who happily leave work every night to hop onto a pet project or two and code the evening away; they're not doing it to get a leg up on the competition, they just like programming! I don't see why that shouldn't be a contributory factor in a decision whether or not to hire an employee. I think the bigger issue is raised in the initial tweet in the post -- "Advice received on hiring software devs: reject anyone who doesn't have a @GitHub profile (the more active the better). Agree?" Open source experience shouldn't be a negative filter but a positive one.