Friday, January 29, 2010

More Training News - This Time Qt

KDAB, the Qt experts, is extending the training courses it offers for Qt developers. If anyone is interested, a detailed press release with all the information can be found here.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Training Offerings from Linux Certified

Linux Certified is offering training in different disciplines over the next month or two. A full detailed schedule can be found here. It appears to include everything from system administration to kernel internals.

I have not spoken to too many people that have utilized their training program over the years, so I am not able to give my opinion one way or the other on the value of it. They do have a student feedback section with some comments.

It would be nice if they would post who the instructor is going to be. I would hope that anyone that is interested can get that information prior to spending the money. I would want to make sure that the person is well versed in the subject matter they are speaking about. Linux Certified has been around for a while, so I would assume that they have some good instructors. And, they have some reputable company names listed that have taken part in their offerings.

If anyone has direct experience attending one of their programs, I would be interested in hearing about it.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

FREE Training Webinar Series at Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation has just launched a series of webinars that are free to the public. The press release can be found here.

The best part of these webinars, besides them being free of charge, is that they are being led by multiple luminaries in the open source community. Not too often can you go get a refresher on Linux Performance Tuning by someone like Ted Ts'o. Therefore, I credit the Linux Foundation with putting forth a list of talented individuals to educate more of the public on certain topics in open source software.

I am sure that the goal is to get people interested in taking part in the training programs that they offer. Whether that be the case or not, and it would not be a bad idea if it was, it is good that they are providing this wealth of knowledge back to the community. There is always a need for talented open source developers, no matter the economic situation. The more that are available will just continue to lead to more adoption throughout the world.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Interesting Article on India's Contribution to Open Source

Sam Varghese of ITWire writes an interesting blog piece about India's contributions to open source. You can find it here. His claim is that given the amount of engineering talent that exists in India, it does not necessarily translate into meaningful contributions to open source software.

He makes a valid point to some extent, but at the same time I believe it is important to look at the entire picture. We get inundated with resumes from India on a daily basis. And, as the years have passed, there is no question that the talent level, as it relates to open source, continues to get better and better.

However, the most important point is that some of the best open source engineers from India tend to make their way over here. They generally will latch onto some consulting firm that will provide them with visa sponsorship, and then they start working on a project for a company in the United States. That is of course if they could not go directly to a technology company, which proved somewhat difficult during the economic growth years due to the consulting firms snatching up a lot of the visa allotment. But, I digress. Unfortunately for these engineers, some of the projects they get put on are not always relevant to their open source skills. Luckily, there are a number of companies that are willing to transfer an existing visa, and thus it gives them entry back into the world of open source if they have had to deviate from it for a short period of time. This has happened time and time again throughout the years.

Perhaps you do not always see the contributions in open source made by engineers from India, but that does not necessarily mean they are not happening. A large portion of the engineers we work with are from Indian decent, and their impact in open source software will be meaningful for years to come.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Linux.com Launches Job Board

It appears that Linux.com has launched a job board on their site. The press release can be found on Linux Today here .

I believe they have had their jobs section for a little bit of time (could be wrong), but it appears they are either relaunching this or putting more effort into it by utilizing the JobThread Network. It is a very interesting concept in the sense that you end up paying $.49 for each matching view.

It will be interesting to see how this does. As has been the case, the number of open source positions continues to increase. Perhaps they will be able to take advantage of this situation.