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The person with OSS contributions has a lower bar to prove their competency for job-related tasks, because they happen to already have a body of work to show that competence.

However if we get a more competent candidate who likes gardening more than programming, we'll absolutely choose them over the pure passion person because they'll do the job better. They just have to show that competence in some other way, e.g. via the interviews or past job accomplishments.

I think it depends on how the interview goes? If the candidate is "passionate" about watering their solo house plant, maybe not as much.

On the other hand, I can't imagine someone with tons of OSS contributions who _isn't_ passionate about programming at some level.

It would be reasonable to think that the candidate with a ton of OSS contributions has a passion for something, which luckily for the company it happens to be coding.