On Tuesday 05 December 2006 19:42, Bryan J. Smith wrote: > Anselm Lingnau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The LPI promised Alan to keep his certificate ACTIVE for 10 years, > > and they have now unilaterally reduced that to 5. > > I can't answer to that for Alan, because I didn't take the exam then. > If LPI specifically stated "ACTIVE" for 10 years, then Alan has a > case.
Actually I don't have a case, at least not in the legal sense. But: I passed my exams during a period when certification was under review. At the time I was new to this whole LPI thing and didn't understand it all. But when the dust settled I accepted that I did not have a perpetual certificate and that it would be active for 10 years. For better or worse I accepted that, was happy with it, and encouraged something like 200-odd South Africans to also get the same cert under similar conditions and terms. Except that some faceless, nameless, identity-less non-entity at the upper levels of LPI has now decided to change that, with no notification, no warning, no asking me what I thought. When I started supporting LPI in my country 2 years ago, there were 22 LPIC-1 graduates and 2 LPIC-2 graduates. There are now many hundreds more, and it all traces back to me as the prime mover way back when. Lately I've had to back off from this work due to other commitments and someone else has stepped up to the plate in true FLOSS tradition and is doing a fine job of it. I could list all the other things I've done for LPI, like why I sometimes jokingly put an Ubuntu 103 MNW (may not write) in my .sig, but this is not about what I have done in the past. It's about why suddenly no-one at LPI thought to ask me what I thought of an impending change, and apparently didn't ask anyone else in a similar position to me either. Apparently my track record is good enough to warrant me being the first choice to ask to arrange exam labs, item writing workshops and the LPIC-3 pilot event. But my opinion as an Alumni as to cert retirement policy was not sought. Why is that? OK, so I'm ticked off. But remember that almost no-one supports LPI for purely logical reasons. We do it because it's cool. We do it because we contribute to something worthwhile. We do it because LPI is something by us, for us, something that we help create, make better and move towards greater and greater heights. It touches that deep part in our soul that defines what is cool. LPI is what it is today because collectively *we* made it that way. It wasn't a vendor, corporation, association or the government - it was a collection of individual people who thought this was worthwhile, and the original founders and current management are of course generally part of that collection. But now suddenly, my point of view and input doesn't matter, at least not in regard to this one matter. Scott, Glenn, Matt and the rest of the current LPI management team; I know you all read this list and you are reading this post. Which one of you is going to be the first with enough balls to own up to making a mistake and propose a way to rectify it? alan _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
