Sony offers hacker a job. Hacker turns them down because of geoHot
inquisitr.com
inquisitr.com
"To clear up any confusion, I was not offered a job, just an interview, which I declined out of principle. For those saying "I'm going to regret being principled", etc. Probably not. Android App sales have been more than good to me. Good, enterprising, devs should never find themselves short of opportunities."
I wasn't trying to "ride on the geohot wave to get 15 mins of fame". Without beating my drum too much, I've already achieved a moderate degree of it within the Android community. http://twitter.com/#!/koush
I had been tweeting about geohot's happenings for the past few months, and then I got that recruiter email. So I responded, and took a screenshot because the whole thing was a pretty ironic, and tweeted it. Then ~16000 followers made it go viral: http://twitter.com/#!/koush/status/46345951819993088
Yeah, I get job offers like that a couple times a week. Guess what, I turn them down too. And it's not hard at all, because they are not offers of a plum job, they are an invitation to apply for a position.
It is the recruiters' job to cast a wide net and reel in as many candidates as they can.
Yep. If you don't currently get them and want them, post on some FOSS-related mailing lists. Like magic, you'll get dozens!
A third-party Google recruiter courted me because of my, quote, "reputation in the Python community" after a single message to python-list.
It is just a cheap-shot to ride on the geoHot wave to get 15 mins of fame.
This is like people "sticking it to the man" by yelling at the cable company representative - helps no one.
What's more is that it's now on Hacker News - so it's bigger news than Sony probably ever intended it to be.
Uhh, almost all big companies reach out like that. In fact, bigger companies are more likely to need such talent reach out like that because of their brand than random small companies.
It is only unusual for someone to confuse it for an actual "job offer".
People like to point to the guy on top as big and evil. Rightnow it's Apple, 12-15 years ago it was Microsoft. Tomorrow it could be Google.
The iTunes cracking restrictions are probably related to their contracts with providers selling stuff on the iTunes store. The requirement to use iTunes for managing iOS devices is simply because no other software has been written to do it.
There's no documented requirement to only use Mac OS X for iOS development. Infinity Blade (seen here on the left: http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/games.html ) was mostly developed in Windows ( see http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/GettingStartediOSDevelopment.... ).
There's also very real concerns regarding hacking - i.e. you want to avoid getting the rep for being that company responsible (think Sidekick) for the Paris Hilton situation, where all of hollywood's A-list celebrities phone numbers get leaked onto the internet. You're trying to build a secure device.
The business motivations are obvious. Apple builds a good closed system. Google builds a janky open system. Both models work, neither is right or wrong, and both companys go to the bank.
And just to put things into perspective, there was no App Store when Apple launched the iphone. I'm pretty sure they never intended for there to be, but once they saw what people were coming up with 'off the ranch' it became fairly obvious to them to let developers develop on their platform. The reason I'm fairly certain Apple had no initial plans for this is simply because, on the version of the first public firmware (and only the first one), everything ran as root user... that's just idiotic.
Taking an existing idea and implementing it far better than the incumbent is not ripping off. It's progress.
Ripping off involves wholesale copying without adding anything original, substantial, or worthwhile to the effort.
It's more like a great indy iPhone app that increases the value of the phone and even becomes one of the reasons people are buying the phone. Then Apple decides to build the same functionality right into the phone making the app obsolete. That's a much better analogy.
Now I'm not against Apple doing that at all. In fact I think it's a no-brainer, and failing to do it would be disappointing. It's just a shame that the little indy guys who created that market for them get shut out. Toss them a couple million bucks or something you know?
What about Psystar?
As for Psystar, what about them? Apple has not gone after the hackers who figure out how to run OS X on non-Mac hardware. They've not gone after the numerous web sites that tell you how to do it. They've not gone after the book you can readily buy at B&N or Amazon on building a hackintosh. They've mostly looked the other way (hell, they have even been known to include in OS X updates bug fixes for problems that only manifested themselves on non-Apple hardware). It sure doesn't look like Apple has much of a problem with people hacking.
We know what he means, but other people take the word hacker to mean something else.
If Sony came to this site and saw this article, they'd probably think the same thing too. If the email was sent to try and get them to change their ways, it probably won't have worked at all, since they might not even understand the meaning of the message.
The hacker solidarity here is awesome, but I agree let's not overestimate Sony's recruitment team.
PS. Oh, and Sony was not offering this gent a job, it was a simple "feeler". Google sends out these in droves, it does not mean they are sure job offers.
Also, "reaching out" is a far cry from a "job offer"! You still need to be phone screened and extensively interviewed in-person before you have any sort of shot at an offer. Gotta make sure the candidate actually knows his or her stuff, and that they're not going to act like a complete asshole.
Basically, whether they know it or not, they are effectively being punished for their actions. The failure to recruit a few talented candidates that will read about this will harm their long term business success.
georgecmu's comment is good too. Those sorts of emails from recruiters are closer to the random snail mail you get from credit card companies saying "Contratulations! You're pre-approved!" -- just fill out this form with all your PII and we might really approve you. Maybe. It's a little better filtered than that, but not too much.