Red Hat's Certification Program Questioned 84
unitron writes
"Nobody loves you when you're not down and out,
apparently. A not overly long article
in the business section of today's (4/16) News and
Observer talks about how Red Hat's certification program
is getting them compared (unfavorably) to Microsoft,
mentions the fears of some that certification efforts
will become fragmented and also discuses the Linux
Professional Institute certification program plans. "
get your shit together, redhat (Score:1)
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Review: RHCE/RH300 Training (Score:1)
The RHCE training course is well-designed, well-rounded and complete with a mildly-difficult lab exam. The RedHat employees are friendly and helpful, the amenities are gracious and complete. Over all, the experience was great.
The concerns that I and others in my class had regarding course material (ambiguous questions and the occasional too easy lab) were listened to by the Training Coordinator (Peter Childers, a very intelligent and good person) personally, and all concerns were met with questions that showed intent to change the course material to the better. The course is in a state of continual improvement, and each class will be better than the last. Soon, there may be divergent levels of difficulty to accomodate the wide spectrum of Linux users. This is a good thing.
To those who believe that the RHCE is a bad thing, take the course and decide unbiasedly. You cannot shout from the rooftops to the Linux community (slashdot) about something that you have no credible knowledge of. Go visit RedHat and talk to the people there. It will surprise you to find how much work puts into the Linux community, that is outside the scope of RedHat. They evidently have their heads screwed on straight, they are out to make a profit (what company is not?) and are doing it the right way.
In conclusion, I recommend that people of all skill levels go and take the RHCE course. If you are a knowledgeable user, the class will teach you quite a bit. If you are a very well versed Linux developer, you might not learn quite as much, but it will be a good experience, and it will confirm your knowledge, not to mention give you "RHCE" after your name.
--anxiously awaiting my cert in the mail
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Re: "Public Software" (Score:1)
I tend to call it "Free Software," always capitalised as if it were something special. And I would never use "Free" by itself, because it's way too ambigious. Examples:
"Is this Free Software? Cool."
"Check out this new Free Software Web browser!"
If you like to add Latin words in your everyday speech, you could always say "Software Libre" or simply "libre."
"Is this Software Libre? Cool."
"Check out this new Software Libre Web browser!"
"I'm working on modifying this libre application."
That just sounds a little weird.
See, in French, they have no problem with the confusion. Free is either "gratuit" or "libre," with libre meaning free as in free speech.
"Regardez ce logiciel libre que j'ai obtenu, Pierre!"
or
"Pierre, ces pingouins offrent la biere gratuite!"
when to worry about RH (Score:1)
It's Caldera we should worry about.
headline == content? not really (Score:1)
the whole business of certification (Score:1)
And as for MCSEs, no they don't last forever. When MS cancels a certain test, you have like a year to take a new one to replace it, or else you're out (as your NT 3.51 example). You have to keep up with their latest/greatest programs.
More of the same? (Score:1)
Standard Test (Score:1)
the whole business of certification (Score:1)
Evil, pure and simple.
Standard Test (Score:1)
The differences between distributions is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. I realize PHBs may not know that, so that's where we come in to say, "Hey! Linux is Linux, bub" (or something close to that
All these in-house fighting between which distribution is evil incarnate and which is our savior, which company should have a certification test, or which desktop environment should be nuked off the planet all make it tough for an advocate to spread the good word of Linux. Let's face it, RedHat has money, and we can either bitch and moan, or use it to help everybody whether it's by hiring kernel/GNOME programmers or establishing tests to appease PHBs. RedHat isn't MS, we can voice our opinions to them with a decent chance of it being heard. They sure as hell don't want to be knocked off the market, so they'll do plenty to help Linux and OSS in general.
the whole business of certification (Score:1)
The certification debate is similar to the "Do geeks need to go to college?" debate. I actually think that they do need to, just for learning the basics which one is less likely to learn on ones own. In that way, going through a certification course may be useful for learning the basics. I'll repeat, though, that I don't think that it should have a lot of effect on the perceived value of a new employee. AFAIK, MSCE certification doesn't expire, meaning that someone who received it on NT 3.51 would have the same certification as someone who received it on NT 4.0. I'm not an expert on either of these systems, but I know that they are significantly different, and I wouldn't immediately say that a person fluent with 3.51 would be able to be fluent with 4.0.
Enough rambling. I hope I've made my point.
when to worry about RH (Score:1)
That exactly right. I think that they learned their lesson right around when they released 5.0
I don't really see any reason to knock redhat anyway: They have a really nice distribution, they support countless open source efforts and they are trying to get linux onto the desktop. Since when did making things easier for the end user become the definition of monopolistic motives anyway?
get your shit together, redhat (Score:1)
I have no problems with the redhat certification program. But redhat ought to fix their fucking installation program. It is absurdly inflexible. For instance, you "have" to use that damned DiskDruid program to allocate partitions- that stupid thing by default makes everything an extended partition, guaranteed to be incompatible with some linux programs. It also forces you to use their precompiled kernel. This _really_ sucks. One time I needed a custom SCSI driver just to install stuff to a hard disk, but it wasn't available for the kernel version redhat was shipping.... ack
Anyways, redhat seems fine other than their damned installation program.
Cert across the Linux distro's? (Score:1)
Let's flip side that. (Score:1)
You are talking future tense, and I maintain that RedHat has already crossed this line, of releasing other-than-public-software.
And they're contributing to GNOME for the hell of it and releasing the code under the (L)GPL as fits. You seem to forget that all the commercial distributers do similar things, just RedHat is the biggest one and the one most (currently) dedicated towards doing things the (L)GPLed way.
when to worry about RH (Score:1)
It doesn't matter that the product is free when 90% of the people are convinced they need to have the name of one company on it.
Why do you think the Coca-Cola company is as big as it is? Everyone can mix a similar drink!
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]
A Suggestion (Score:1)
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]
My problems with a Red Hat certification... (Score:4)
1) Certification changes for the worse the way skills are evaluated.
In the absence of certification, employers have no way to evaluate prospective employees' skills except the hard way. This may amount to probation periods for new hires, practical demonstrations of skill (fix this busted server and we'll hire you), or simply bringing trusted technical employees into the interview process.
In the presence of certification, employers tend to evaluate skills the easy way -- on the basis of certifications. This leads them to undervalue an employee who lacks certifications, and to overvalue one who has them. Both are errors, potentially grievous ones. The former harms both employee and employer; the latter mostly harms the employer.
Well-marketed certifications give employers the impression that they can safely rely on the certification as a credential, whether or not it is actually worthwhile. This is the nature of marketing -- just as ubiquitous marketing is able to make an inferior product such as Windows NT into "the standard", it is able to make an inferior or useless certification into "a standard". Naturally, once it is established as a "standard", employees are virtually required to obtain it.
The hazard for the certifying authority is this: if a certification can be made into a de-facto "standard", then the employment market for the relevant skillset becomes recursively dependent on that certification, and the certifying authority gets to ride the gravy train, while dragging the employment market through the dirt -- harming both employer and employee in the long run. This is arguably what Microsoft has done with the MCSE.
While there may seem to be little risk of such a degradation in the Linux employment market at present, it is certainly a possibility in the long run. To prevent this, it is in everyone's interest that employers get used to evaluating skills the hard way, even if they use certifications as part of this process. My recommendation is to bring trusted technical staff into the process of evaluating prospective hires. Who is better to tell you whether the candidate is qualified?
2) A Red-Hat-specific certification encourages, even without malice, Red Hat dominance.
Though Red Hat may have exactly zero imperialist or Microsoft-like intentions, it remains the case that if employers start accepting a Red Hat certification as a "standard" certification for Linux, it may be expected that they will follow this up by preferring Red Hat over other distributions. This will encourage software producers to fixate on Red Hat Linux as a "standard", as I have discussed elsewhere [slashdot.org].
Further, because Red-Hat-specific skills will be expected of most people seeking Linux-related employment, a person seeking to maintain or develop skills on other distributions will be at a disadvantage, time-wise, to one who focuses solely on Red Hat Linux.
Finally, market dominance is in the business interests of any corporation; that's just what corporations do. "Every frustum longs to be a cone, and every vector dreams of matrices"* -- and every corporation wants to boost its stock value, even those which aren't publicly traded (yet). A certification may, in time, become another tool of this process -- again, with no hostile or imperialist intent on the part of the people at Red Hat.
* Stanslaw Lem, Cyberiad.
I'm going July 12th (Score:1)
I've looked over what they're going to teach.. Yes, some of it is Redhat only stuff... but most of it is general GNU Linux stuff like ifconfig, route,
It looks like a great program
Side note.. if anyone else is going July 12th-July 16th, Email me
ChiefArcher
when to worry about RH (Score:1)
s/GPL/free/;
there are other free licenses out there, and more importantly, licenses out there that are more free than the GPL
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Perhaps a name change would suffice? (Score:1)
Red Hat - feel free to use this idea!
when to worry about RH (Score:1)
Is Redhat the only one? (Score:1)
Excuse me? (Score:1)
You don't seriously expect something like that to catch on around here, do you?
WARNING: rampant sarcasm ahead (Score:1)
Is Redhat the only one? (Score:1)
Public Software (Score:1)
To grab my dictionary, "liberate" has three meanings:
1) To free, as from oppression, represssion, bondage, or foreign control.
2) (Chemistry) To release from combination.
3) (Slang) To obtain by looting; steal. In this sense, used ironically.
So, you could call GPLed software "liberated software" under meaning 1 -- and a warez d00d could call an illegal CD of MS Office "liberated software" under meaning 3. I'd argue that free speech/free beer is a lesser burden to explain to buisnessmen than free speech/stolen goods.
Another alternative, emancipated ("no longer subject to official authority or control") has a secondary definition as well ("no longer subscribing to accepted moral and social conventions"), with some connotations of libertinism (no, I do not mean libertarianism or liberalism). Could cause problems with buisnessmen -- and if you don't care about them, "free" is just as good.
Public software carries both connotations of the public domain and of government control.
"Free Source software" or some variant separates GPL/BSD/X/NPL from Microsoft Internet Explorer while keeping the word "free" around (which is lost in "open source") with the secondary connotation that *binaries* do not necessarily have to be free.
Frankly, I think Libre is the right word to use. It has the exact definition we want and isn't too difficult to understand (it even looks like the word "liberty"). Heck, English borrows from foreign languages (esp. French) for new words all the time anyway -- why not libre?
when to worry about RH (Score:1)
With Applixware (non-GPL), the RedBaron WWW browser (non-GPL and dead because of it), and
Metro-X (non-GPL and not that much better than XFree).
You are talking future tense, and I maintain that
RedHat has already crossed this line, of releasing
other-than-public-software.
I like that phrase. I'm gonna start saying "Public Software" whenever I'm tempted to say "free" or "GPL'd" or "Open Source".
Public Software. Wow. Like, no question about
who owns it. Like the highway. Or Social Security.
Public Software (Score:1)
Wow.
I see this as a failing of government, not
a problem with software or with language.
It's like the whole "hacker/cracker" problem.
I guess language evolves to the lowest common
denominator.
RE: "Public Software" (Score:1)
I was naievely going on the memory of "government
of the people"
I forgot that "security concerns" replaced "freedom" as the national ideal some time in 1972,
when the hippies were either all dead or too tired
of protesting.
Fragmented certification is good (Score:1)
I hope that RedHat only claims to certify people in their usage of RedHat. If Slackware, Debian, SuSe, etc want to certify people in their ditributions, go ahead.
Also, I think that certification is a good thing. I might not validate someone's skill, but it at least gives company big wigs to look at and knod their head about.
--pc
What choices have they had? (Score:3)
Once again, rampant paranoia and delusion reign supreme in the press. I for one, am not shocked.
What choices did Red Hat had for providing certification? With no community organizations doing anything until _very_ recently, Red Hat decided to start training people so that Linux could get in the workplace, on resumes, and gain some desparately needed corporate credibility.
They blazed their own trial in this matter because there was no path made yet. They certify Red Hat Linux because that's what they are experts in. If history serves true, Red Hat would happily sponsor the community certification movement mentioned-certification is certainly outside their business.
Once again, why should Red Hat be attacked for choosing to do something by themselves when no coherent community efforts were availiable in a usable state ( cf. LSB )
RE: "Public Software" (Score:1)
It's not "security concerns", it's "investor's rights". Have you looked at NAFTA or the Multilateral Agreement on Investment? These documents give corporations rights equivalent to nations. So public policy (i.e. social security, banning poisonous industrial chemicals, taxation) is being subordinated to the protection of investment.
And this is what "freedom" has meant to American public policy makers, more or less, since the days of Madison.
Jonathan
Re: this is why i use slackware (Score:1)
when to worry about RH (Score:1)
This is silly. (Score:2)
First off, Red Hat is a tiny company. Anybody who compares Red Hat to Microsoft does not have a good grip on history. Microsoft from the day it was born was a mean, vicious company. As an example, in the TRS-80 days (yes, I am that old!) they offered a BASIC compiler and if you wrote applications with it you had to pay Microsoft a 9% royalty on your sales to license the runtime libraries! At the time, Microsoft was about the same size as Red Hat is today.
Red Hat by comparison has commited to only having free software in their distribution. They fund important work for the community like GNOME, Rasterman, and Alan Cox.
Second, what else could Red Hat certify? They only know Red Hat. What if you wanted a Red Hat centric certification? How else could you get it?
Lastly, there is nothing wrong with certification. A license to practice medicine is a certification, a college degree is a certification, a driver's license is a certification. The world is full of them. It doesn't mean everything, but it does mean something. If I see that you are certified, I know that you at least attended some classes. It doesn't mean that you know everything, but it does mean that you know something.
My computer, my way. Linux
--
Howard Roark, Architect
the whole business of certification (Score:1)
Maybe I'm too idealistic, but that's so evil it's beautiful.
=moJ
- - - - - -
Member in Good Standing,
Perhaps a name change would suffice? (Score:1)
I mean there *are* certain things that are unique(dubious) to each Distro and PHBs (being the singular minded people they are) will look for something like this; however the General Linux Certification would ensure not only the PHBs but Real People(tm) that the candidate is of quality.
I favor a LINX Certified by RedHat (Score:1)
The smaller folks make very small add-on tests which certify for their particular flavor.
This way, Cheap Linux won't have to make a full certification course just to certify people. They could re-use the generic certification, and give their own additional stamp.
It'll also fill more lines on the resume.
Very Very well said! (Score:1)
Review: RHCE/RH300 Training (Score:1)
-Kara Pritchard
Kara@luci.org
Public Software (Score:1)
I'm going July 12th (Score:1)
RH certification, necessary evil (Score:1)
Frankly, my experience is that "Microsoft Certified" isn't worth the paper it was written on. Don't get me wrong, I've known some excellent programmers that were Microsoft Certified, but they only got the certification because they needed it to make an employer happy. They felt it was a silly waste of time, themselves.
It seems that the more cluless IT managers see " certified" as a mandatory requirement.
If the existance and availability of programmers and sysadmins who are "Red Hat Certified" can convince a few of these clueless IT managers to replace some of their god-forsaken NT servers with Linux boxes since it gives Linux some creadibility in their pointy-haired corporite minds than I'm all for it!
I liked the suggestion that someone made elsewere of establishing a more generic Linux certification program, perhaps the major distribution companies doing it as a joint venture. This takes the petty distribution feudes out of it.
And then there's the distro-specific stuff... (Score:2)
Sure, Red Hat is a for-profit corporation and they are competing for market share, but so far, in general, they're doing it the right way - producing GPL'd software and selling support.
Certification and the Corporate World (Score:2)
Now. .
Standard Test (Score:1)
I like the idea of RedHat offering certification classes, but I also think it should be standardized. RedHat should continue offering the classes, which are a great way to go for people who arn't comfortable teaching themselves, but the test should conform to the LPI standard. That way there would be no difference between a RedHat linux certification, and say a Debian certificaiton. I also like the idea of modular program where you can be tested in different areas, allowing for someone to be just an admin, or a programmer, or even a master as described in an earlier post.
Standard Test (Score:1)
Nerd/Geek? (Score:1)
Well sure, we still bite the heads of chickens (I told one of my coworkers this one day as a joke in responce to me being a geek). But we tend to like the fact that we are geeks/nerds much more than the average "nerd" does.
this is why i use slackware (Score:1)
enough (Score:1)
As long as Red Hat remains compatible with all other distributions of linux what does it matter?
We need to advoid the bickering and concentrate on maintaining OpenSource and standards that will allow distributions to remain compatible.
headline == content? not really (Score:1)
And then the comparison was that they were "borrowing a page from the enemy's playbook" by offering a certification program. Those bastards!
C'mon - seems like the headline is a little overblown to get attention, no? Or maybe the conspiracy nuts see a deliberate plant by M$ to cause division in the Linux camp.
Do we really need this crap? The headline would be better as: RedHat certification critiqe - but that doesn't get as many hits as: RedHat is turning into another Microsoft, does it?
Check out redhat.com!! (Score:1)
Can they do that?
Maybe Rob made some kind of arrangement with Redhat. At least I hope so.
--
Woops!!! Spoke to soon. Sorry. (Score:1)
I still wanna know where "The Little Things" came from.
Sorry guys.
--
WARNING: lame excuse ahead (Score:1)
(trying to secretly point out the obvious without anyone knowing)
--
RE: "Public Software" (Score:1)
Certification has its benefits (Score:2)
First, as Linux's popularity (hopefully) increases, bringing with it the demand for employees, the tendency for less-than-ethical job seekers will be to inflate their knowledge. While this may not seem like a hard thing to defeat for someone in a Unix shop, for a company without any current Unix knowledge, there isn't a real easy way to figure this out. So the guy gets hired and their first Linux server doesn't work so well. The sad fact of life is that many (perhaps even most) of the people hiring technical people these days don't have the skills to verify knowledge in an interview.
Second, corporate employers have a hard time understanding the idea of "playing with the technology". For them, if you can't point to an actual job where you used technology "X", they assume you don't know it. Telling them that you've been putting two hours a night for the last few years will be met with blank stares. So certification allows those of us not so lucky as to have Linux jobs right now to get some sort of credit for the knowledge.
$1.5 mil, and you wanted a CERTIFICATION PROGRAM? (Score:1)
Damn... maybe I'm not too skilled in business politics, but if I did that for my employer, I'd want a car or something. Anyone? Anyone?
enough (Score:1)
Certifications are useless! (Score:1)
Of course there is also the "dick measuring factor"... those who obtain cert's just so they can add them to their sig. It's like, "Hey, look at me. I'm a computer god! I've got fifteen acronyms after my name..."
J.R. Harper
Dr. of UNIX Wizardry, MCSE, CNE, CNA, PHd, BSME, BSCS, MSEE, FUCKME...
If I had the money I'd do it (Score:1)
NOW, for all you crazy Anonymous (and probably MS employees) who hate RedHat and talk about it as Microsoft would.
DOWNLOAD THE DAMN DISTRO FOR FREE. IT IS GPL.
I, for one, won't do it. I will support them and in my own way by buying like I always do their official distro.
I WANT THEM TO BE RICH.
I want games, apps, stupid apps everything on Linux.
If they are the ones that are gonna bring it, SO BE IT.
CIAO
Maybe we should remove the anonymous cowards thing to avoid having MS employees starting a hate campaign or a division campaign!
CIAO
I don't like the idea of dist. specific cert. (Score:1)
I think what should be done is a couple things.
1) separate testing from prep. services
2) testing is administered by an NPO, unconnected to a dist - This ensures that any test which carries any weight is not unfairly biased towards any specific dist. This test will cover information specific to each of the major dists... there is not that much differentiation among dists when compared to commonality, further this ensures certification is given to people with a wider knowledge of Linux than just 1 dist.
3) Preparation services can be offered by anyone - If somebody wants to prepare on his own, great, if Red Hat wants to offer prep. services, great - in order to give their clients the best service (so the clients get the best marks on the exam), they would have to provide info about all of the dists covered, not just theirs. Hey, if a high school, tech. college, etc. wants to offer prep. services - perfect - their customers just have to pass through one unifying exam.
I know that I would prefer to hire someone with a wider range of knowledge about Linux than just Red Hat (or just Debian...)
---
???
Review: RHCE/RH300 Training (Score:1)
granting, i was in this guy's class, and we spent
a very large chunk of time playing xgalaga.
but it is a positive thing for a lot of people,
and i think that's a good thing.
rj
RH is a BUSINESS, A DAMN GOOD ONE!!!! (Score:1)
Red Hat has provided $$ to developers of GPLware, they give LUG's awesome FREE stuff, and they are really COOL folks.
All you RH = MS people should really think about the fact the PEOPLE NEED TO WORK SO THAT THERE IS FOOD IN THE REFIRDGERATOR, and RH is a group of folks who are doing a GOOD THING while EARNING A LIVING. (not to mention grabbing MS by the throat)
-Ken