BSD Certification Group Releases Roadmap

Jeremy C. Reed writes "The BSD Certification Group announced on Thursday the release of their certification program roadmap. This publication introduces the Group's planned BSD system administrator certifications and the construction of the certification program. The press release is available, as well as the certification roadmap."

Comments

I'm going to make my 9 year old take it

[dezmund]

Just for fun

Re:Who cares?

[Shanep]

I do.

BSD's do actually get used in some pretty big roles.

Looks like...

[astellar]

...they want to rename "Donate" button to something more complicated...

Neutral Certification

[MadX]

I really do think that this will be a good thing.

I have my LPI-2 certification, and I believe the neutral-vendor type certifications are really the best. It serves as a base from which to work. For the Employer there is a twofold bonus.

1) The Person is willing to prove himself/herself that they are able to use the system (without testing by the employer) to a certain degree.

2) The candidate was willing to study. This I see often where a person does not try to further themselves within their field of expertise, yet expect to walk into another job, and expect the employer to know that they are totally capable. There has to be a starting point - and this is it for the x-BSD's

I would certainly see myself doing this certification.

Re:Neutral Certification

[Itchy Rich]

I have my LPI-2 certification, and I believe the neutral-vendor type certifications are really the best.

Agreed. When the certification authority is also the vendor of the system or environment you're being certified for, you have to wonder how much of their syllabus, weighting, etc. is focused on proving you have the skills for real world situations and how much is based on promoting their products.

For example, accusations have been made against some Microsoft certifications (I haven't done any myself) that the "correct" solutions to the situations posed in exam questions inevitably involve buying more software from Microsoft.

my thoughts on certification

[frovingslosh]

I just want to say that as someone who has hired my share of programmers, I'm not impressed with people who have certifications. I find that many times they really have less understanding in the area that they are certified in than I'm looking for, and they have tended to make passing a test rather than working with and understanding the subject their priority. On top of that, they seem to expect better pay than the good programmers because they have a certification.

I understand that this is not the universal trend in the industry, but I want people who can write good code, have the ability to understand things on a system level, and can adapt to new situations rather than certified people who slowly produce poorer quality work and give me blank stares. Give me someone who can write code to make different systems on a network interact, and who will get out network tools and track down complex network problems over someone with multiple network certifications any day of the week. I don't work in a BSD shop and I don't see that happening any time soon, so this doesn't directly concern me, but if I did I would not take this certification as a good thing.

Re:my thoughts on certification

[$RANDOMLUSER]

This is a certification for a sysadmin, which is a different kettle of fish. Many employers are reluctant to allow sysadmins to learn as they go, they're expected to know what to do when The Bad Thing (TM) happens - fast.

Re:my thoughts on certification

[Crixus]

I find that many times they really have less understanding in the area that they are certified in than I'm looking for, and they have tended to make passing a test rather than working with and understanding the subject their priority.

Isn't that true of our education system in general? Testing is done more to rate the teachers that the students. This is a BIG problem with education as I (and others) see it.

My friend David is working on methods of adaptive teaching which adresses these problems to some degree. In fact, he sees teaching no differently than a jazz musician seese music... improvisation.

Re:my thoughts on certification

[n54]

I just want to say that as someone who has had my share of bosses, I'm not impressed with people who mix up OS certifications with programming certifications. I find that many times they really have less understanding in the area that they are managing in than I'm comfortable with, and they have tended to make passing out directives rather than working with and understanding their employees their priority. On top of that, they seem to expect better pay than the good employees because they are bosses.

I understand that this is the universal trend in the industry.

;)

Seriously though, you are completely correct that certifications on their own isn't much good and that some of the people taking them somehow delude themselves as to how smart and experienced they are. However if you were to hire an unknown sysadmin/netadmin with knowledge of a particular OS or network equipment you wouldn't mind seeing that they've actually at least taken some relevant certifications because unlike in programming it isn't that easy for them to really show you their knowledge in a reasonable amount of time. The certifications are simply a way to have a third party back up any applicants claims to a certain level.

Re:my thoughts on certification

[gregmark]

I took several of the basic SUN SysAdmin and NetAdmin exams a couple of years ago. They may have helped my foot find a door or three, but they definately helped me focus my learning and become a better sysadmin.

At the time, I was self-unemployed (a victim of my own hubris during the bubble when you could get hired for knowing how to spell UNIX) and needed a way to maintain my skills while broadening my base of OS know-how. I used the exams as a way to gauge my weak spots and fill them in with both book knowledge and test environment experience (ie, goofing around on my Ultra 5). When I finally got back on the horse 2 years ago, my learning substrate, if not my OTJ experience, had been greatly expanded. Over the course of the next year, I learned more about good sysadmin practice than I had during the all the bubble years.

Recently, I took the free Solaris 10 exams and passed them. Again, it focused my efforts to learn about many of the new features like zones and SMF.

The value of a certification is determined more by what the certifiee intends to accomplish by earning it than what an employer thinks it reveals about the certifiee.

Yet another silly certification

[jimmydevice]

MSCD,MCSA,MCP,MCSA,MCSE,CCNA,CCNP,MCDBA,CISCO,BLA, BLABLA...
To bad intelligence isn't delivered in a TLA/FLA.

I'm glad I don't live in your space.

the point is.....

[amodm]

does it help them gain more popularity or market share?

I believe if someone is installing BSD on a company infrastructure, he/she would already be knowing enough about it to run it.

The reason why I say this is that BSD is a good OS, but to believe that its a good OS (in the flood of linux), one has to know BSD well enough.

IMHO, hiring ceritified professionals help when someone installs something about which they don't know enough.

Re:Who cares?

[Shanep]

OS X wouldn't be half the operating system if it didn't have its BSD kernel (though they did quite a bit of hacking on it).

Actually, from all the sources I have read, OSX consists of a Mach kernel, FreeBSD userland utils and NeXT interface. All of which, very seriously tweaked and hacked. However from the way Apple writes about the FreeBSD portion, it seems that they may have rolled some FreeBSD into the Mach kernel. Then again when Apple said their new Mighty Mouse was touch-sensitive, I interpretted that to mean that their new Mighty Mouse was touch-sensitive. How silly of me. ; )

BTW, I like Apple hardware and software, so I'm not trying to bash Apple too baddly.

BSDs are still alive because their code is needed to be alive. If you commit to a BSD, it's practically public domain; take it and do as you see fit.

That is why BSD can't die. It will always be with me and it is in some places that even geeks might not notice.

In my opinion it's the best kind of open source, but of course I see the need for the GPL as well. It's just too bad they can't work together more closely, and are instead moving apart gradually.

Recent changes to OpenBSD's malloc might spotlight some bugs in GPL applications which are likely to lead to fixes being sent from a BSD hacker/port maintainer to GPL projects. Already this malloc change has found a 10 year old bug in X which was apparently very difficult to find otherwise.

Re:Who cares?

[asciiRider]

You said you don't care about or understand the certification.

Makes sense.

You don't care about it because you run 3 different distro's on desktop class hardware in a non mission critical enterprise shop.

You don't understand what is being offered because the problems (and solutions) you face in your 3-PC world are different than the person who does understand (and care about) this certificaiton.

Re:DragonFlyy BSD?

[liamjfoy]

DragonFly BSD is based upon FreeBSD. Same training can apply to DragonFly.

The Chicken and the Certification Egg

[Anonymous Coward]

Background: 38yo geek who got his first programming job 22 years ago and has been full time IT for over 15 years. Self-employeed rent-a-geek... er I mean "IT Consultant" (who does quite well thank you)

So what do I do? I've got more experience and talents than 95% of the punk kids eager to take my customers.. So I go into see Joe business owner and I tell them "Yeah, forget paying MS or other companies for software, I can get you all the software you want free. BTW, You've never heard of me, you don't know penguin from a daemon and I don't have a piece of paper to my name that says I know anything. ... But give me some money and all your IT problems will be solved."

(Like it or not) The vast majority of the people hiring IT consultants have never heard of a BSD. They've only heard of Linux because of the dotcom era. I have for many years mocked people who got MCSE's etc. But a business reality is that some people want that piece of paper...

But if I get any BSD certifications -and I probably will- it will be a dual edged sword. The goobers out there want a piece of paper so they sleep well at night knowing they hired an "expert." BUT I won't mention it to people who know what they are talking about because frankly, I mostly agree with you that if I see someone with too many certifications I run like hell figuring they're an idiot.

However there is one thing that definitely makes me fall to one side of the fence...

[Not baiting people but] (Even the most diehard fans of other platforms can probably bring themselves to admit that) the BSD's are the best pure server platform going. But how do I explain that to a lawyer or a CPA or an investment banker?

Like it or not, things like this boost the whole platform. It gives it an air of legitimacy to the unknowing.

So- I'll hold my nose and sign on the dotted line.

Could be useful

[kellererik]

There seems to be a real test on real computers for the advanced exams, from what I found in the roadmap. If this is really the case, then the exam could be worth something.
Most of the other exams simply prove that the person to be tested was able to click on the right spot while taking said exam. The multiple choice exams tell nothing about the problem-solving skills of the tested person, IMHO.
I got into a discussion with the trainer while taking a training for a certain test, that very trainer told us all questions that might come up and require a "wrong" answer to pass the test. In that discussion said trainer told me: "I know this is wrong, but you want to pass, don't you?"
In short: I don't see any value in the "click-through" tests.

Say what you want, but...

[Toy G]

... I have been recruited much more often since I got a cert. I am all for self-improvement and always relied on self-learning, but I couldn't get my foot on the door properly until I got that bloody piece of paper.

Cisco certified BSD bigot

[puzzled]

  I've been doing that Cisco thing since 1998. CCNA, CCDA, CCNP, CCDP, wireless specialization, one exam away from CCIP, one exam away from Call Manager Express specialization - before you make a farting noise with your mouth understand that I'm sitting at home in my underwear at 9:00 AM and I may not get dressed until lunch :-) I like the dress code at my job.

  My customers have a mix of FBSD 4.11/5.4 and some OpenBSD 3.4 on wireless bridges. My customers are uniformly mid sized shops with need for a serious network engineer but not enough work to justify a full time person. Its very easy to slip BSD into these environments - "Hey, you have an old PC we can use for (X)?" Resistance *is* futile once this process starts.

  BSD certification would mean that the big shops in town currently seeking people with Red Hat certifications, because their management can't poor piss out of a Knoppix CD, let alone assess an admin's skill level, will start seeking BSD certified people. This is a good thing for me personally, for BSD as a whole, and the competitive pressure from the BSD source/ports based aerobics instructors is something the Linux distro binary package fatladies desperately need.

  Yes, I said fatladies. I've got SuSe 9.2 on the machine I'm using to type this and 9.3 on my lappie. I'm looking into it because I think it might be marketable ... but I'd sure rather have BSD for almost everything I do. Don't you shoot your mouth off, you little fanboy you, until you've typed a mile at the console of a FreeBSD box.

Re:BSD FOREVER

[Shanep]

I spent 3 days trying to get it installed, but it kept kernel panicing during installation. Does that count?

Your hardware is one or more of:

1/ Broken.
2/ Buggy.
3/ Unsupported.

I install OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD on all manner of machines.

I have FreeBSD 5.4 Release on my Sony VAIO VGN-A49GP, OpenBSD on my various Sun Ultra's, and Apple Macs and NetBSD on a few work Dell machines. Each of them is running within various VMware machines also.

I have *NEVER* had a BSD panic during an install.

Re:Who cares?

[zulux]

Already this malloc change has found a 10 year old bug in X which was apparently very difficult to find otherwise.

Always do this! Compile your app on the weirdest platform you can find - it's amazing the amount of bugs you can find!

I use to compile the core of our flagship Windows app on an old Sparc OpenBSD box now and then. The bug-catching was tremendous.

Now that our flagship software runs on *NIX, Windows now the orphan test bed ;)