OT- Re: Certification and Employment

[KRFinch at dstsystems.com]

For what it's worth, you can still study up and take the bar in at least
two states.  Virginia is one of them, and I think the other is either Rhode
Island or Connecticut.

Unfortunately, Virginia's bar exam is one of the hardest ones in the
country, and it is very tough to pass even with 3-4 years of law school
under your belt, or so I've heard.

- Kevin

                                                                           
             DCT Jared                                                     
             <jsmith at datacapte                                             
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                                                                   Subject 
                                       Re: Certification and Employment    
             02/04/2004 08:49                                              
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On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 20:40:30 -0600, Shayne Patton wrote:
>OK, my first real question.  How many of you all have jobs where you
>work w/ Linux/OSS/gnu.  Out of the people that do, do you think having a
>linux cert or 2 is helpful in finding a job working w/ Linux?
>2nd real question.  I really would like to get involved with a volunteer
>project or something where I can get actual "real-world" practice rather
>than just setting stuff up on my LAN in the basement.  Does anyone know
>of any projects around the metro where I could actually help with a
>Linux/OSS project?

Slow down, Shane. One question at a time: :-)

1. Certification:

Certification is nice, but not necessary if you are serious and devoted.
I personally will never get certified because I don't like what happened to

doctors and lawyers when their certification process became universal about

120 years ago. Used to be you could study Blackstone real hard for a few
years, take the bar exam and become an attorney, like Abraham Lincoln
did. Now you MUST attend 4 years of ethics-robbing law school before you
take the bar. I'd like to see Open Source sustain the credibility of certs
without mandating them. Therefore I work hard to learn as much as I can
about the art of programming without being certified.

2. Local open source projects:

Take a look at ethereal, one of the top-10 best projects in all
open source, which is managed by Gerald Combs. ethereal.com is
down at the moment so here is Google's cache of their site:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.ethereal.com/

And Hal Duston works on memcheck, memory allocation checker:
http://hald.dnsalias.net/projects/memcheck/

And David Nicol is working on http://www.tipjar.com/ and
http://www.pay2send.com/

And Charles Steinkuehler hosts LEAF: Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall
http://leaf.steinkuehler.net/

And Jason Clinton helped put kcindymedia.org together, and teaches
a Communiversity class on Linux which may be quite useful to you.
http://www.umkc.edu/commu/w2004skills.htm#Computers

And you'll see Hanasaki's name from time to time in the Linux Kernel list
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Kernel/2004-01/6540.html

And Chris Bier has a linux-heavy links page on his site:
http://www.cymor.com/links.php

As for me, I put together the open source WinLAMP on company time.
http://www.dctkc.com/winlamp.php

3. Finding a job working with Linux:

I have a job as a proprietary programmer, but recently successfully
brought in an open source project for our company, through an unusual
chain of circumstances: more details will be posted to KCLUG when
the first alphas are available on sourceforge... in about a week. (RSN)

4. Real world practice on a Linux LAN:

KCLUG often talks about putting together a
laboratory/cluster/free-email-portal, and it will happen someday, but
has not yet. David Nicol is a good one to talk with about this,
among others.

BTW, there are certainly other local projects I am unaware of; these are
just the ones I can remember off the top of my head at the moment.

-Jared