It's not that: it's that without acknowledging the bias, the 'meritocracy' philosophy suggests that those who do OSS are the best at what they do, which is not necessarily true.
No, but they are those most easily demonstrably good at what they do.
I mean, if you had a Ruby job opening and you got applications from Aaron Patterson and 20 other people, would it be unfair to put Patterson's application at the top?
There might be another applicant as good, but 1) you have to look harder and 2) you can't really tell until after you've hired them.
Picking a sure thing over a gamble is pretty understandable.
