The Builder.com.au site has a new article posted today about Open Source developers and why your company could benefit from adding them to your workforce.

Some companies are afraid that hiring an open source developer would be a liability - possibly reverse engineering their proprietary software and then releasing forked versions into the community. Although these may sound like justifiable fears, they overlook some very important benefits that come with hiring open source developers. Let's take a look at some good reasons to hire open source developers.

They list the five reasons (from a business perspective) companies shouldn't be afraid of adding Open Source developers to their teams:

• You can see more than their resumes.
• Open source developers have had to think on their toes and patch the programs that Microsoft has (often times) intentionally broken.
• Open source developers are [generally] very passionate about what they do.
• Along with an open source developer you will enjoy open source support.
• And like adopting any open source project, you will save money.