We consider software developers who can either work on an open sourceproject or on a closed source project. The former provides a publiclyavailable signal about their talent, whereas the latter provides asignal only observed by their employer. We show that a talented employeemay initially prefer...

We consider software developers who can either work on an open source project or on a closed source project. The former provides a publicly available signal about their talent, whereas the latter provides a signal only observed by their employer. We show that a talented employee may initially...