You raise an interesting point. Would an applicant with "zero" commercial experience (which i take as "not being previously employed in a similar role") but open source projects in Python under his belt qualify as suitable for this role?
Potentially. To be fair, the quality of their code plays a big factor. The problem with someone who has no open source commits means I have no way of judging their code. It's not just the code either. If you've built something cool & interesting in your own time then you instantly move up in the ranks of suitability.
Does a clean-room implementation of java.util.Map interface qualify as interesting? I ask this because someone might be perfectly capable of writing quality code, but might not be thinking up an idea that comes off as cool or interesting or original to you.
