That's very true in the case of private companies. I'm not sure to what degree employing developers who contribute to open source projects (probably for lower than private sector wages) works in the case of a lot of public sector entities.

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onion2k a day ago | parent [-]

Why would it make a difference? Offering developers a salary to contribute to an open source project is a good thing. Leave the developers to be free if they want to work for the offered amount.

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ghaff a day ago | parent [-]

There are often different incentives, constraints, and pay scales. Nothing against public organizations doing this obviously. Just don't see a lot of evidence that it works well in general.

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onraglanroad a day ago | parent [-]

Might work as part of a job guarantee scheme. Rather than being paid welfare benefits you can get more money by working on open source.

Edit: I mean from a society perspective you pay a tiny bit more for a real gain, without reducing labour from the private sector.

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hvb2 16 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is that most of that work is not something anyone can pick up.

Regardless of the coding, one would first need to be familiar with git or VCS in general.

Also, you would want people to go back to normal jobs when they can. This would lead to short stints for all employees which I've always found to be one of the best predictors of bad outcomes

	▲	onraglanroad 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Obviously it wouldn't work for everyone but for those who have an interest in computers it would be a nice option. I was unemployed for a while in 2008 and I'd have loved it if I could have got paid minimum wage for working on open source rather than just getting jobseekers allowance and searching for jobs that didn't exist. Plus I'd have learned some valuable skills that would help me find work anyway. And it would have increased the numbers of IT savvy workers. Seems like a win-win-win.