Contributors - grow them with training

Open source is increasingly leaning towards structured training content to encourage more and more developers. Some time back I had shared about Mozilla foundations plans and now Linux foundation has announced a new program. Linux foundation is particularly interesting as a central organization influencing many projects and platforms under the Linux umbrella. Involvement of community members as mentors further underlines the seriousness behind the program.

The growing number of such initiatives point to a genuine need for open source training. The opportunity presented by open source, accentuated by the slow down makes a perfect case for more and more developers to take up open source contribution seriously. The Linux foundation post captures some compelling data.

While the Linux server market is predicted to reach $50 billion dollars in three years, and the embedded and mobile Linux markets continue to explode, the picture is less rosy in other corners of the IT market. Developers are being laid off, and many are looking to careers in the Linux and open source sector. The freelance marketplace Odesk (www.odesk.org) recently reported that the number of Linux-related jobs posted on its boards has increased more than 1400% since 2006. The Linux Foundation’s Training Program will help meet this demand for industry, and provide the tools for a new generation of programmers.

However, the biggest challenge to such programs is scale. Sure Linux foundation plans to start with San Fransisco followed by similar sessions in other prominent cities in the country but that would still leave a vast majority of addressable developer base through rest of the world. Even if logistics wise this is made possible mentorship bandwidth is limited and simply won't scale as much. This is a challenge applicable to Kenfuse as well and in the absence of a silver bullet solution, the nearest thing one can think of is to reduce the mentorship level per session and spread it over a larger audience. This is suboptimal but a structured courseware with projects evaluated by mentors can stretch the limited rope. Take this to classrooms and this can led much need fresh air (current connect) for under-grad students.