21 May 2013 dmarti   » (Master)

What are the benefits of participating in open source?

Depending on the project and your role in it, you might get lots of different benefits.

  • Learn new languages and tools to keep your skill set current.

  • Practice techniques that you might not be able to justify putting time into in a corporate environment. (For example, coding for extreme security or efficiency or minimum power and memory usage.)

  • Make connections with people outside your company.

  • Signal your technical competence and ability to work with others. Often, willingness to put time into open source depends on the job market for high-skill non-management programmers. The more that the hiring process depends on formal education and certification, and the less input it has from peers, the less incentive that a programmer has to Signal his or her skill using open source.

  • Talk with real users about bugs and features without a company filter, to get a better understanding of a software problem space.

Syndicated 2013-05-21 03:19:26 from Don Marti

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