MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-07-12 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Bulding a community
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https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/2020/06/building-a-sustainable-open-source-community-training-and-certifications/
Building a sustainable open source community: training and
certifications
By The Linux FoundationJune 16, 2020

Training and professional certifications are an important part of how
open source technologies establish themselves as industry-leading
solutions and adopted in commercial ecosystems
Introduction
In an earlier piece, we discussed how, over the last 20 years, the Linux
Foundation has grown from a single project, the Linux kernel, to an
organization that has helped to convene and host hundreds of the world’s
most important open source communities.
The Linux Foundation’s support programs add value for our communities as
they enable our projects to engage and grow a technology ecosystem
worldwide.
The Linux Foundation has over 1,600 member companies, representing 100%
of the Fortune 100 tech and telecommunication firms, small businesses
and startups, hundreds of end-user companies, and everything in between.
It also has over 25,000 software developers contributing code, a shared
investment that we estimate to be valued at $15.7B – and growing. Our
hosted projects enable advancements in many technology areas and across
many vertical industries, from security to networking, edge computing,
cloud, automotive, blockchain, embedded systems, and web applications.
With the increased demand and adoption of open source technologies comes
the desire for professionals with the skill sets to deploy, manage, and
operate systems and support end-users. According to the Linux
Foundation’s most recent Jobs Report, some key findings were revealed
about open source employment opportunities:
Source: Linux Foundation 2018 Jobs Report
Hiring open source talent is a priority for 83% of hiring managers, a 7%
increase from 76% in 2017.
Hiring managers cited cloud (66%) as the technology most affecting their
hiring decisions. Containers placed second at 57%, followed by security
(49%) and networking (47%).
Finding the right mix of experience and skills is difficult for 87% of
hiring managers. That included the 44% who rated it very difficult, a
percentage that leaped from 34% in 2017.
Thirty percent of respondents working in open source technologies
improved their ability to work on exciting projects, collaborate with a
global community (19%), and work on the most cutting-edge technology
challenges (16%).
This report will be updated this autumn, and early indications show that
these trends are accelerating given current market conditions.
The Linux Foundation provides a complete portfolio of support programs
for training and certification, which align with the technologies that
its communities develop. The support programs currently focus on eight
primary domain areas:
Linux Internals
Open Source Developer Compliance
Systems Administration
Security
Networking/Edge Computing
Cloud
Web Development
Blockchain
These programs are co-developed with the communities, and we add
programs all the time as communities request support.
Why training and certification are critical for open source communities
The Linux Foundation’s communities request support for training and
certification because it creates a cadre of professionals that can
implement solutions using their collaboratively developed technologies,
with demonstrated expertise. Additionally, without trained and certified
professionals, these technologies will face challenges achieving or
scaling both industry adoption and commercial ecosystems supporting
them. Having end-users adopt the technology, and commercial solution and
support providers also provide a pipeline of future contributors back to
the project’s codebase. As the open source technology is deployed, it
gets tested, bugs are found, new features are requested, and all that
feedback cycles its way into the upstream project, sustaining and making
the project better for everyone dependent on its continued success.
For many open source projects, to gain adoption and generate a
commercial support ecosystem, they will ultimately need to have training
and certification programs. While this may sound similar to how other
professional communities have matured and have become validated for
developer and engineering certifications for commercial clouds and
proprietary software systems, there are some important distinctions as
to why a commitment to developing training and certification for open
source technologies is critical to their long-term success.
The open source community works more organically and cyclically, which
necessitates that a cadre of expertise is built for it not just to be
deployed (as the commercial training and ecosystem have worked
historically over the past 40 years) but also as part of its continuing
development and for it and all of its participants to thrive.
An open source software community develops software, and it gets
deployed by professionals. Those professionals often eventually move on
to different organizations and implement the same software. Those
organizations will ultimately need more people to support deployments
and write applications to extend and customize the software. These
organizations also need system administration professionals and cloud
providers to support solutions based on these open source software
systems.
Why should communities create training and certification programs with
the Linux Foundation?
Straight from the source, and integrated into how communities are built
and run. As the home of Linux and other major open source technologies,
nobody is closer to these projects than The Linux Foundation itself —
its training programs are uniquely integrated with our communities and
projects. We understand how to align instruction with a community
development model. Training is one of the support pillars that also
enable the developers and engineers to focus on the open source
project’s development and leave educating users and implementers of the
code to the Linux Foundation’s training team.
Accelerating community growth through free training. Thanks to our
members’ support of the Linux Foundation and its projects, we are often
able to provide free training courses from our communities. Free
training is one of the fastest ways to bring more people into our open
source communities as they learn, test, deploy and support solutions
based on the open source technology, as they usually come back to offer
suggestions, feedback, and fixes.
Vendor-neutral courseware. The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit
organization and does not promote any particular commercial product,
solution, or service.
Excess funds received go back to the project community. Although the
Linux Foundation keeps pricing affordable and frequently offers further
discounts, the overall program does generate a surplus. Since we are a
nonprofit, the surplus is invested back into the open source community
in a variety of ways: we provide scholarships to deserving individuals
to become trained and certified at no cost, and the Foundation supports
projects that are important to the world but do not receive individual
or corporate financial support. Surplus funding is also used for
linux.com as well as other digital assets and key initiatives such as
CommunityBridge.
Up-to-date Curriculum. Linux Foundation courses are current with the
most recent version of the software or technology. As the host of many
of the most critical open source projects that are continually changing,
the Linux Foundation is in an excellent position to find experts and
ensure the materials are maintained and updated alongside the project’s
evolution. Additionally, enrolled students receive access to the latest
course versions at no additional cost.
Current and cutting-edge technologies. The Linux Foundation hosts the
fastest-growing and most influential open source projects and is the
first to release courses about them.
Expert instruction. The Linux Foundation’s courses are created and
taught by some of the top developers and practitioners in open source,
with decades of collective open source experience behind their belts and
a deep familiarity with our open source communities.
Relevant material. The Linux Foundation’s courses are created using
feedback from its massive community of open source practitioners and
companies. Students can be confident that the topics they are learning
are applicable in today’s business environment. Companies and
organizations can integrate certifications in their hiring search and
evaluations to find professionals with qualified skills.
Conclusion
With the most popular open source projects receiving upwards of 90% of
their code from commercial companies, they are continually seeking
trained people with the skills to deploy, support, and operate the open
source technology. With Linux Foundation training, in most cases being
free to access, our communities can efficiently train a vast ecosystem
of people with skills companies are seeking to employ. The online
delivery of our courses also makes our training accessible to people
from low-income regions around the world, where access to training can
provide a considerable boost to their career prospects.
Enterprises especially value certifications as evidence that employees
are qualified and have demonstrated their expertise in a particular
technology. Enterprises also want to train their existing employees on
new technologies in an organized, efficient manner, which professional
training courses can provide.
Offering training and certification is one of the best ways to scale any
growing open source project community. For a project to continue growing
and get more contributors involved, the community will need individuals
to be able to gain an understanding of the project in a relatively quick
and straightforward way. Our organized training curriculum was designed
to fill this expertise gap.
The Linux Foundation’s training and certification offerings, combined
with its community-organized events, provides a well rounded and neutral
path to build skills and enable people to contribute back to its
projects, sustaining their efforts into the future.
Author Recent Posts
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So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
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Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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