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More than one million people took Open Source courses

Swapnil BhartiyaBy 2544 views
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The demand for people who are skilled in open source technologies is growing. The fastest way to bag one such job is by taking a course.

Open Source has become the defacto software development model in the enterprise world. Even traditional heavyweights like Microsoft and Oracle are embracing Open Source technologies.

As the adoption of these technologies is skyrocketing, the demand and supply gap of skilled developers and available jobs is growing. There aren’t enough skilled people to meet the growing market demands.

Linux Foundation, a home to many major open source projects, is aware of this gap and has been working on creating certification programs and courses to fill it. In 2014, the foundation started working with edX, a provider of online courses, to offer online courses.

According to the foundation, more than one million people have enrolled in such courses. “Over the past four years, the market has spoken loud and clear — providing high quality, free and vendor neutral entry level training is a critically important component of ensuring continued growth and adoption of open source software,” said Clyde Seepersad, General Manager of Linux Foundation training.

What makes these courses really useful is that the foundation works on emerging technologies like Blockchain and Serverless. Working closely with these industries, provides the foundation with deeper insights into what kind of skill demand exists. The foundation responds and creates courses to address those demands.

“For example, over 65,000 folks registered for our Blockchain course within the first 100 days,” said Seepersad. “There’s clearly a huge appetite for materials on critical open source projects and we’re committed to continuing to develop courses to help fill the need.”

“Their courses address popular and cutting-edge technology skills and prepare learners for career success. We look forward to our continued partnership and to launching many more courses in the future,” said Anant Agarwal, MIT professor and CEO of edX.

In addition to these courses that are targeted at greenhorn developers, the foundation also offers developer certification programs to ensure that these developers have the skills that they need for the job. Node.js Foundation, a Linux Foundation collaborative project, recently announced the Node.js Certified Developer (NCD) Program to cater to the growing demand for certified Node.js developers.

These courses are not limited to the open source projects that are hosted by the foundation, they also offers courses for OpenStack and Microsoft Azure. All that matters in the end is that it serves the open source ecosystem in one way or the other.

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