I o.7. Hiring from the Community A few people in open source are famous in a general sense, but, much more importantly, at the level of code contribution to particular projects, many people have built reputations within a particular community. Open source is open and public, so you can see code, written postings, and so on that you would never see in a candidate from a closed code company. It may be a good idea to use those resources. In some cases, you might want to hire the maintainer of a code project if it's important to you. Martin Fink of Hewlett-Packard cites a "two-hop rule. If a project is important to his organization, he likes to know that he is two people away from a maintainer or key contributor to the project. Either someone on the project, or someone who is known and trusted by those on the project, should be known to him.