Session
Applying Open Source Methodology to IT Examinations
Dru Lavigne
Track: Emerging Topics
Date: Wednesday, July 25
Time: 10:45am
- 11:30am
Location: F150
Open source projects have well-defined mechanisms for running globally collaborative development and documentation projects. These include versioning systems, release engineering and security teams, a commit bit process, style guides, mentoring, translation teams, mailing lists, and the use of OSI approved licenses.
The BSD Certification Group quickly realized that none of these mechanisms exist in the current IT certification world, including the existing certifications that cover open source operating systems and applications. Certifying bodies are closed groups, often associated with specific commercial vendors. Examinations are delivered using expensive, proprietary software whose security mechanisms are unavailable for inspection. Study materials are not freely available or created through a collaborative process. There is little to no association with existing post-secondary programs. In short, the entire process is closed, expensive, and seemingly designed to generate profit for commercial vendors.
The BSD Certification Group has strived to keep their process open, affordable, understandable, and auditable. In other words, they are breaking new ground in introducing qpen source methods into the IT certification process.
One such example is the collaborative development of an exam delivery method. This talk will discuss the mechanisms used to structure the development, then give details of the delivery method itself.





















