Tillman Hodgson wrote:
Nobody wants a
cert with the name "junior" in the title but "BSD System Administrator,
level 1" or "level 2" (as the LPI has done) seems to be both accurate in
description and acceptable to those attempting to get the
certification.
We did the numbering scheme for a number of reasons:
1) No ambiguity. You know immediately what the ranking is. There are
never any doubts about "is an 'expert' a higher level than 'technician'?".
2) Far better in working with multiple languages. Descriptive words
(expert, technician) are subjective in nature, and thus subject to both
linguistic and cultural mis-interpretation.
As the BSD cert is not (I assume) primarily marketing-driven, IMO its
naming scheme should be 100% driven by clarity.
Now that I've addressed the easy questions....
I keep hating to bring these things in, but the naming debate leads to
an important business/admin issue. The name of the certifying
organization, and/or the name of the certification, *must* be legally
trademarked to protect the organization. Otherwise anyone can say
they're BSD certified, even print their own certificates with your name
on them, and there's not a thing you can do to stop them.
Trademark registration is a long process (LPI filed in November 1999 but
wasn't granted the registration -- the right to use "®" - until March
2004) and can cost multiple thousands of dollars in legal fees. Many
registrations fail -- of the more than 150 applications for trademarks
containing the word "Linux" at uspto.gov less than 10 have succeeded.
(Trivia #1: We were originally going to call LPI simply "The Linux
Institute" but we were told that name was too vague for trademarking so
we had to add the word "Professional" in, to get the name accepted.)
(Trivia #2: Using "TM" next to an intended trademark without a pending
registration is at best useless and at worst illegal, depending on the
jurisdiction. It's only supposed to be used if you have a live
application pending and has no legal weight beyond that.)
Compounding the problem is that, unlike for copyrights, there is no
international convention for trademarks. LPI's name and logo trademark
is presently registered or pending in:
- US (complete)
- Canada (pending)
- the European Union (complete, but we had to fight a challenge)
- Japan (complete)
- Brazil (pending)
- China (complete)
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of countries, but you have to
start somewhere. Each registration is independently done.
Since the BSD cert effort does not produce software or training, its
only assets are its certification program and its own reputation.
Without trademarks protection, both are potential targets of theft.
If a BSD certification becomes valuable (that is, employers start to
request it when hiring), people WILL look to ways to subvert the
legitimate process of attaining one. Things will look fine so long as
you're off the cheaters' radar -- but when they take notice, watch out.
So...
1) Can this effort afford to leave its efforts unprotected?
2) If not, who's going to pay for all this?
- Evan
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