What about "we hire from the pool of those who contribute to our open source projects. If you want to work for us, that's where to start?"
The problem with unpaid internships is that they are closely supervised and hence end up with something like an unpaid employee. But what if the relationship is more loosely coupled? What if "just because we won't pay you for this doesn't mean someone else won't" is a part of the message?
The beauty of open source development is I can do it in my free time, and because I want to. Often times having open source development on your resume is simply a way to show you're a motivated developer and to demonstrate the quality of the code you produce. I'm not sure it can be directly compared against an unpaid internship, apples and oranges.
Right, but part of the question is, if unpaid internships are so bad, what about mentored open source development? How can one draw a line?
From my perspective, hiring people in related open source technologies means little ramp-up time development-wise, it means seeing someone who has a somewhat entrepreneurial spirit, and the like, all on top of the benefits of unpaid internships.
That might happen at one or a few companies, but it doesn't describe the entire software industry or even a large portion. It seems to in some other career paths.
The problem with unpaid internships is that they are closely supervised and hence end up with something like an unpaid employee. But what if the relationship is more loosely coupled? What if "just because we won't pay you for this doesn't mean someone else won't" is a part of the message?