The hands-on experience is always helpful. My experience is that most folks out of college are now ready to learn, not ready to contribute meaningfully, and even that is more a result of attitude. Some feel they're ready to teach us folks on the front lines a few things or two.
Having said that, I've seen that many good colleges have a co-op program: students work two or three semesters with a real-world company, getting paid to work as a normal worker. The pay is lower, but the idea is to train these students to function in the real world. It's a variant on the old idea of apprenticeship, but it's very efective. It allows some companies to vet possible candidates, and it gives the participants some meaningful backgroun. My daughter has participated in the program at Texas A&M, in Computer Engineering, and benefitted enormously by it.
I'm always much more interested when a candidate has had a co-op experience. At that point, they're much closer to contributing meaningfully to our situation.
The question assumes a technical viewpoint, part of the very reason that FOSS has a slow acceptance.
Most users don't care what OS they're using, so long as it does what they want it to. Even the comments by the very knowledgable people here confirm this view. One comment said that since he was already using Mozilla, OpenOffice, etc., it was easy for him to move over. Precisely the point.
The app's drive the OS, not the other way around. The most common app's are not unique to Linux or FreeBSD; those that ARE unique are generally at the technical end of the spectrum.
The other problem I have with the view of those that resist Windows development is that the view tends to be espoused by idealogues. People who hold to an ideology unreasonably tend not only to have low credibility, but also hurt the very cause they support.
People know me as FOSS bigot, and so I am. But to be fair, Microsoft puts out adequate software for most people's uses. (Compared to the prices of software during mainframe times, it's even comparatively well-priced!) I do think it's expensive by today's standards, but what drives me over to FOSS is anti-monopolistic views, as well as the clear evidence (to me, anyway) of Microsoft's unethical business practices. I just don't want an untrustworthy company owning most of my software.
I think if you want to get FOSS adopted, then you MUST go to where people are at. To ask them to come to you with a promise of a later benefit will never work. For example, GIMP is an excellent program, and it has a strong Windows following. That will open them to OpenOffice, or other pertinent app's. If they see benefits (stability, power, speed, cost, compatibility), then they'll be open to further exploration (Linux, OpenOffice, Egroupware, Firefox, Evolution, etc., etc., etc).
As long as I'm on my soapbox, I'll add that clone applications will never drive those users over. We're asking them to trust a bunch of unpaid volunteers (we see it as a community; they see it as unfunded or under-funded at best) to do the same job as a funded company. Not likely. The applications must be SUPERIOR in some significant way(s) to draw your people. Firefox is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
People didn't seek it because they didn't like Microsoft. They sought it because it was superior in most ways. It's the biggest threat to Microsoft's IE in a long time.
If our community can continue to put out superb software like that, we'll win in the end.
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The hands-on experience is always helpful. My experience is that most folks out of college are now ready to learn, not ready to contribute meaningfully, and even that is more a result of attitude. Some feel they're ready to teach us folks on the front lines a few things or two.
Having said that, I've seen that many good colleges have a co-op program: students work two or three semesters with a real-world company, getting paid to work as a normal worker. The pay is lower, but the idea is to train these students to function in the real world. It's a variant on the old idea of apprenticeship, but it's very efective. It allows some companies to vet possible candidates, and it gives the participants some meaningful backgroun. My daughter has participated in the program at Texas A&M, in Computer Engineering, and benefitted enormously by it.
I'm always much more interested when a candidate has had a co-op experience. At that point, they're much closer to contributing meaningfully to our situation.
The question assumes a technical viewpoint, part of the very reason that FOSS has a slow acceptance. Most users don't care what OS they're using, so long as it does what they want it to. Even the comments by the very knowledgable people here confirm this view. One comment said that since he was already using Mozilla, OpenOffice, etc., it was easy for him to move over. Precisely the point. The app's drive the OS, not the other way around. The most common app's are not unique to Linux or FreeBSD; those that ARE unique are generally at the technical end of the spectrum. The other problem I have with the view of those that resist Windows development is that the view tends to be espoused by idealogues. People who hold to an ideology unreasonably tend not only to have low credibility, but also hurt the very cause they support. People know me as FOSS bigot, and so I am. But to be fair, Microsoft puts out adequate software for most people's uses. (Compared to the prices of software during mainframe times, it's even comparatively well-priced!) I do think it's expensive by today's standards, but what drives me over to FOSS is anti-monopolistic views, as well as the clear evidence (to me, anyway) of Microsoft's unethical business practices. I just don't want an untrustworthy company owning most of my software. I think if you want to get FOSS adopted, then you MUST go to where people are at. To ask them to come to you with a promise of a later benefit will never work. For example, GIMP is an excellent program, and it has a strong Windows following. That will open them to OpenOffice, or other pertinent app's. If they see benefits (stability, power, speed, cost, compatibility), then they'll be open to further exploration (Linux, OpenOffice, Egroupware, Firefox, Evolution, etc., etc., etc). As long as I'm on my soapbox, I'll add that clone applications will never drive those users over. We're asking them to trust a bunch of unpaid volunteers (we see it as a community; they see it as unfunded or under-funded at best) to do the same job as a funded company. Not likely. The applications must be SUPERIOR in some significant way(s) to draw your people. Firefox is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. People didn't seek it because they didn't like Microsoft. They sought it because it was superior in most ways. It's the biggest threat to Microsoft's IE in a long time. If our community can continue to put out superb software like that, we'll win in the end.