thoughtcrumbs

Reputation systems for open source developers

Is there an eBay-like reputation system for open source software developers? If you have a newbie developer joining your project, how do you determine how much access to give her?

The closest things look like the member profiles on SourceForge and Advogato. The SourceForge skill lists are self-reported, so they aren't especially trustworthy. (I so wrote the book about integrated Czechslovakian cryptography heuristics.) Advogato has this ambiguous master-journeyer-apprentice-observer certification where anyone can rate anyone else (including themselves), even if they've never collaborated before.

Reputation's a huge motivator for open source developers (Mockus et al., 2002; Stewart and Gosain, 2006). Sellers on eBay care a lot about their reputations, even beyond the financial impact (Resnick and Zeckhauser, 2002). So why isn't there a similar reputation mechanism for open souce developers? Is it simply because money isn't explicitly involved?