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"Hiring is so hard, so burn your free time to help me!" Please don't contribute to OSS unless you really want to. It's great if you do. But making it a near-ma
by mattgreenrocks 13y ago
"Hiring is so hard, so burn your free time to help me!"
Please don't contribute to OSS unless you really want to. It's great if you do. But making it a near-mandatory requirement just means that it drives yet more self-promotion (it isn't a real project unless you buy a domain!), more low quality contributions, and, ultimately, becomes yet another thing-you-really-should-be-doing.
- gmac 13y agoIt doesn't have to be contributing to existing open source projects. I always find it a bit surprising when other programmers have no code to show on Github or similar, for this reason: 1. most people who use computers day in, day out, encounter a pain point or two with the tools they use; 2. as a programmer, it seems natural to fix that pain point; 3. once fixed, it seems natural to share the fix, so that others are helped too (and that can also help post-hoc justify/rationalise the investment of time!).
- svisser 13y agoLegal / contract constraints may prevent people from publishing code written at work or even in their free time.
- ptr 13y agoYou're forgetting the work that's needed to make it production (or at least more production) ready and the maintenance. A fix is often just made "good enough" for oneself in my experience. It's like sharing your dot files.
- rch 13y agoI'm not even allowed to share my my custom portfiles. I started to, but was asked to hold off; that was 2 years ago.