The Linux Foundation Training and Certification (LF T&C) team is developing new, smaller exams that will focus on specific skills to build on our larger certifications. We believe Let’s Encrypt is an ideal topic for this!
To develop an accurate Let’s Encrypt product, we will need to assemble a volunteer* team of 6-8 subject matter experts (SMEs) to define the relevant content.
Josh Aas, ED at ISRG, suggested we reach out to your community for volunteers to help with this project.
Are you interested? Below is a high level description of the opportunity:
SMEs will participate in the
job task analysis (JTA) workshop to determine appropriate exam topics
item writing workshop to evolve exam topics into tasks to be solved on the exam
Both workshop sessions will be effectively facilitated by LF T&C staff, via Zoom, over two half-days – short and sweet. We are aiming to do this Wed June 29 and Thurs June 30. SMEs should participate in both half-day sessions.
In addition to the workshop sessions, SMEs can expect
to do a little asynchronous home work
to participate in short exam alpha testing (one or two 30-min async sessions during the next 90 days)
to consult on implementation details if needed during our development cycle
Subject matter expert volunteers who beneficially contribute to exam development will earn the Exam Developer badge, a non-expiring credential honoring their work.
While I'm not able to participate in such events unfortunately, you might want to include the timezone of those sessions. This is an international Community
Although looking at the weird backwards date notation I suspect you're from the US.
Since your organization charges people for credentials and has full-time paid staff, I do not understand why your organization is uninterested and unwilling to pay people for their time and skills – as they are clearly able to do so.
Edit: I've been involved with Free and Open Source Software development for 20+ years. I simply no longer tolerate those who monetize the documentation and certification of FOSS projects, without compensating those people whose contributions enabled all that to happen. If you need a Subject Matter Expert, pay them. If you sell printed documentation, compensate the developers and authors who didn't realize the important difference between a MIT license and a Creative Commons license. Just because you can abuse a person or situation doesn't make it morally right or an acceptable path.
I understand this group first reached out to ISRG - which is something that doesn't often happen. The complete disinterest in compensating people though? This is should not be considered acceptable by anyone.
Is Let's Encrypt in favor of this exam?
Or is it just a "The Linux Foundation Training and Certification Team" idea without consulting Let's Encrypt and Internet Security Research Group?
There are plenty of other Operating Systems using Let's Encrypt; such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD *BSD, Windows, etc. and some of them are even better and more secure than Linux. I do not believe that "The Linux Foundation" needs to be gatekeepers for a "Let's Encrypt exam".
Now if Let's Encrypt wants "The Linux Foundation" to be the gatekeepers for a "Let's Encrypt exam" that is fine. But it is Let's Encrypt's choice and NOT "The Linux Foundation"'s choice.
I read it more as that they reached out to Let's Encrypt for help and Josh replied that they weren't going to be able to assist directly, but that they were welcome to post here to see if people were interested. I don't think there's anything about it that's a "Let's Encrypt project", though, I can see how Let's Encrypt might find it helpful for people to have training available on how to use their services.
