Open Source Training

Someone called my office this morning. he was offering “training” for my crew. i asked what kind of training, and he started to rattle off the usual suspects: MSCE, Novell++, whatever. I told him we are an open source shop, and I could hear him turn the page and say “you mean, like Linux?” Yes, like Linux. He then told me that he has Red Hat training courses for both 7.0 and 7.2

Heh. 1998 called, they want their distro back.

I then told him “well, we have some pretty smart cookies here. Not to sound arrogant, but I bet my engineers are smarter than your trainers.” He responded that yes, I was arrogant. A salesman told me, his potential customer, that I was arrogant.

I went ahead and confirmed his suspicions by hanging up.

Open Source training, unfortunately, is still an afterthought for many of the large training companies out there. The only people I would really trust to teach the RHEL certification is Red Hat. This kinda puts them in the catbird’s seat, and keeps prices high– too bad. The best thing I think Red Hat and Novell could do would be to (forgive me MLK) ‘flood the classrooms’ with RHEL and/or Linux sysadmins. Any sysadmin worth his salt now can administer Linux boxes. But I am talking about all those secondary people: desktop supports, junior sysadmins, floor managers, mail admins, and all their pointy-haired bosses. Never ignore the power of a technically-exposed PHB. Yes, they get in the mix sometimes when you’re trying to make a decision, but generally they are a Force For Good when it comes to budget time, and explaining your hardware/software stack to the rest of the executives.

Red Hat: make training (almost) free, and watch your martketshare skyrocket.