Open source is brutal: an interview with Google's Chris DiBona | Hacker News Reader

Open source is brutal: an interview with Google's Chris DiBona

opensource.com

85 pointstanglesome17 comments

Chris DiBona is great! I work at Google and his team provides a really solid foundation for using Open Source at Google, and for Open Sourcing Google code. I think few companies have the foresight to employ people like Chris and DannyB who help us ensure engineers uses open source legally and ethically.

I totally agree. Chris and his team do an amazing job. What you didn't mention is the assistance they give to our open source projects (like Go, AngularJS, Dart, Chrome and many more) and how they have assist teams in releasing parts of Google's source as open source.

That's really nice of you to say that. Thanks!

It's interesting where they took that -- brutal on new contributors trying to get a foothold in a project. When I saw the title I thought it was going to be about the brutality of uses and random passers-by who critize, demand, complain, and harass developers who put code out there.

Frequently on Reddit, and somewhat less frequently here, posters are told that a key way to market themselves when trying to get the type of job they want is to contribute to open source. This advice is usually tossed out nonchalantly in a list of other things the poster could do. It makes the act of contributing to a project seem like a trivial thing.

It is anything but in the context of DiBona's statement. Is this the best advice to be flinging around? Is that contributing to the problem? New blood in the open source world should be a good thing, but is there a balance to be struck between sending everyone charging out of the gates at whatever project tickles their fancy and maintaining the tight oligarchies that many projects seem to gravitate towards?

It actually is good advice.

If you attempt to contribute to an open source project, you will quickly get feedback on what you're missing. The process is not particularly pleasant. But it is a very fast way to learn what you need to learn, then to find mentors who can help you. People who go through it come out much stronger, very quickly.

I am personally familiar with more than one person with little or no formal education and no job prospects who, through open source, got jump-started on skills that have served them well since. I will not name names since the people I'm thinking of are not public about their stories. But it really is possible to do this.

> If you attempt to contribute to an open source project, you will quickly get feedback on what you're missing.

You hope. And if you do, you hope what you are missing is not some semi-arbitrary whim of the particular project you wish to contribute to.[1]

I certainly think it is good advice for some people; I do not think it is good blanket advice. I also don't think it is a suggestion that should be tossed out as lightly as some people do.

[1] Of course, that could be seen as great practice for dealing with the semi-arbitrary whims of the particular company you will be working for someday.

I want to be one of those people. I've "learned" JavaScript on CodeCademy, I've solved some TalentBuddy problems, but I've yet to create something...

Can you give me some pointers on a project I could contribute to?

I help a little bit with OpenHatch, a meta-project that helps people find open source projects to contribute to: https://openhatch.org/ - you may find it interesting to explore.

You'll probably want to look for a project that says it welcomes newcomers, has some way to ask for help (such as an IRC channel or mailing list), and makes lists of bite-sized/easy bugs to fix. For example, OpenHatch's projects listed for JavaScript include EtherPad Lite (https://openhatch.org/projects/Etherpad%20Lite) and Libre Projects (https://openhatch.org/projects/Libre%20Projects).

I think it is excellent advice. Every job opportunity of note, including a recruitment letter from Google (and, probably, my company participating in Y Combinator) I have ever gotten came from my involvement in Open Source software.

I also never hire anyone who doesn't have some Open Source software out there. Why would I? Open Source has so many great developers with good examples of their work in the wild. It's so easy to see who actually delivers and who just happens to be lucky enough to be on a good team at a company. Hell, I even choose designers based on their work with Open Source software (others do, too; my favorite designer, David Vignoni, stopped doing work for me many years ago when he went to work for Meebo...I'd still be sending him money for new icons today, if he'd take it).

I had the exact same assumption.

The ridicule risk is both a good and bad thing.

Good: You better write good code, and the public shaming is a pretty great motivator.

Bad: I have a lot of code that has never seen the light of day because I don't deem it good enough for the intertubes.

That is a seriously sensationalist title for this Q&A article.

One of the questions was: "You once called open source “brutal”. What did you mean by that?"

So not much editorializing.

Considering that that question isn't the focus of the of the interview, I agree that it's a bit sensationalist.

Anyone have a reference for the mentioned "you once called open source 'brutal'"? Googling it now is polluted with reposts of the current article.

Google's advanced search tools might let you find references older than one month/one year. Sadly, sometimes websites with current dates still show up in searches for historic content.

I think it was during my video interview at OSCON? Who knows...someone should create a website that helps people find things.

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