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Comment by sfk | Hacker News Reader

A further step towards the gamification of Open Source development.

On the other hand, maybe that's Github's future business model: Rank Open Source slaves and sell that information to recruiters.

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I've been thinking about this a lot recently. You wouldn't believe the number of people (VCs, marketers, recruiters, etc.) who strongly have pushed for a similar system implemented in GitHub over the years. The entire concept of open source on GitHub would have basically been a front to become a LinkedIn of developers.

I don't mind sites like the one here coming along and attempting to do this (it has some value), but I'm really proud that GitHub didn't head in this direction, even though there was a fair amount of pressure towards it.

It sounds like you're opposed to the gamification; care to explain why? I'm curious.

Isn't it right there in his comment? Seems that he doesn't like the idea of having to work for free to "rank higher" if recruiters start to use these sorts of scores. Since no other profession has to work for free like this(see: the carpenter analogy), it seems a reasonable position.

It's already started, right? "Github is your resume" is often said; which sucks for those of us who work on enterprise software and private repos that can't be open sourced.

All kudos to those that can spare the time for, make their livelihood on, or have their company allow them to release, open source software.

I want to be like you, but unfortunately cannot.

> Since no other profession has to work for free like this

This is untrue, though. The concept of building a portfolio exists across all creative domains, and almost everyone builds that portfolio initially by doing the work for its own sake.

The biggest problem is that gamification tends to provide incentives to improve your efficiency in affecting the "game" portion, to the detriment of the actual thing being scored. As the game becomes more popular, the game becomes what is important.

that's a flaw in the design of a particular the game and not a flaw of gamification itself. What if you could only be rewarded by doing things properly? By trying to affect the outcome of the game you will be improving how you do things normally.

I thought "gamification of open source development" was always a pretty major part of Github's business model. Frankly I don't know if that's a bad thing; I've certainly been motivated by trying to keep my "current streak" or whatever going on several occasions.

You seem to be under the impression that you think this project is owned by github.

I added in the footer a small note explaining that this project is not related to the GitHub company, do you think i should make that more visible ?

No, I never thought that. I was extrapolating what might happen when an (almost) monopolist like GitHub would start to mine, analyze, and sell data like Facebook.

I've always assumed that GitHub do that already, what makes you think they don't mine [meta-]data from users - is it in their articles of association or user agreement?

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