Bryan J. Smith wrote: > Then it must have come up at the normal Advisory Council meeting, if > there was one.
Nope, there wasn't -- that I was aware of, anyway, and as I said I was around the LPI booth during much of the convention. I would assume that if there had been one I would have noticed one way or the other. > When I was involved with the 2006 April TAC discussion on LPIC-3, the > plan as I understood it was that you would _only_ need to pass *2* > exams to achieve LPIC-3 certification. There were other discussions > as well. E.g., to get a "speciality," you'd only need to have LPIC-2 > and pass *1* exam. Or you could combine 2 specializations into the > LPIC-3, etc... In Cologne, Matthew Rice talked at length about the two »core« exams for LPIC-3, and how they were going to add four different »speciality« exams in due course. A candidate would be expected to pass the LDAP-and-PAM and the Samba exam to be LPIC-3 certified, and could then add specialities such as security, Apache, mail, etc. as desired. There was a half-joke around about how someone with all six certifications would be known as a »LPIC-3 Master Specialist« or some such. Had the new recertification policy been announced in time for that meeting, I would certainly have made a point of asking whether LPI expected such an individual to re-take all six exams every five years, or whether it would be enough to start out with two and take one additional »speciality« exam every five years to keep all the rest ACTIVE. > The idea here was to _maximize_ both marketability as well _avoid_ > people taking exams over and over again on the same content. At > Level 3, you are definitely getting into specializations, and you > can't be too generic or broad. Whatever Matt & co. has come up with > is _very_ well _thought_out_, with _extensive_input_. I'm absolutely impressed with the amount of work that has gone into LPIC-3. There have been so many rumours about LPIC-3 during the years that I've been involved with LPI that it is good to see us moving forward on this eventually. I have a nagging suspicion that, considering that the ratio of LPIC-1 candidates to LPIC-2 candidates is approximately 10:1 (at least here in Germany), and stipulating that the ratio of LPIC-2 candidates to LPIC-3 candidates is about the same at most, the work required to support a couple of hundred candidates a year might be more profitably invested elsewhere within the LPI world but hey! this is still something of a community project, so if there are people willing to do the work then by all means let them. > Apples-to-oranges comparison. LPI is an organized entity with fiscal > aspects, _unlike_ the kernel team. Even the Fedora Project isn't a > perfect example, because the board has external (Red Hat) members, > but it was the best I could come up with. This (apples-to-oranges) is what I said later in my previous message. Incidentally, Debian, which as a software project is run more along meritocracy lines than Fedora and which, like LPI, *is* an organized entity with fiscal aspects, has, as you're undoubtedly aware, dealt with this problem by off-loading most of the fiscal aspects to a non-profit corporation called Software in the Public Interest, Inc. Sensibly, SPI does *not* have veto power about what happens within Debian -- the technical decisions rest with the »meritocracy« within the project. SPI just hangs on to the money on Debian's behalf. As far as Debian is concerned this arrangement appears to work reasonably well. There is no compelling reason why LPI could not be organized more along these lines as well, if there was more emphasis on volunteer participation rather than running the certification side of things as a quasi-business. We even have the non-profit set up already! This would basically make Jim Lacey's job that of a »project leader« elected by those »LPI volunteers« who, like Debian developers, have shown a certain level of commitment and participation over a certain period of time. The comparison breaks down here, since leading LPI is apparently a salaried full-time position while leading Debian apparently isn't, and presumably we (the LPI community) wouldn't be able to attract executives of the caliber that we have now on an honorary basis! On the other hand, running a »community-driven« LPI more like Debian and less like a business might indeed carry some advantages -- so far, in spite of all the in-fighting, and in spite of Debian being a vastly larger organisation than LPI, Debian OS releases have occurred more often than LPI exam releases and in shorter intervals than LPI objective reviews, too :^) And so far Debian does not seem to have had grave problems regarding either sense of mission, street credibility, or funding, all of which are issues LPI is struggling with every so often, so the Debian project must be doing some things right after all. (I'll be taking my tongue out of my cheek now, thank you.) Anselm P.S. In case you're wondering, my other mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] (This is my personal opinion and not that of Linup Front GmbH.) -- Anselm Lingnau ... Linup Front GmbH ... Linux-, Open-Source- & Netz-Schulungen Linup Front GmbH, Postfach 100121, 64201 Darmstadt, Germany [EMAIL PROTECTED], +49(0)6151-9067-103, Fax -299, www.linupfront.de _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
