Hi Duane! 👋
I'm glad you like my OSS contributions :) I like doing it!
So my participation in OSS did help me a bit in getting my job (read the whole story here. But lack of activity on GitHub is not a bad mark on a candidate at all. Being able to participate in open source is a privilege that not everyone has and if we limited ourselves to only those with that privilege (and inclination) we would miss out on some really amazing developers.
When a developer has contributed to open source though that is definitely a plus because it allows interviewers to look at the work of the developer ahead of time and get an idea of skill (both in writing software and interacting with other developers). So if you can manage it, I definitely recommend getting into open source!
I hope that helps! Good luck!