Hi Jeroen, On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 11:11 AM Jeroen Baten via lpi-examdev < [email protected]> wrote:
> I like the idea behind StartIT. I like to help develop it.I think it can > help in the shortage of (open source) software development skills worldwide. > This is great, and we're on the same page here. So I contacted the StartIT team and offered my help. Also because I wanted > additional information. > > In the end, the answers I got, untill it became silent, left me rather > worried. > Let's get the facts right: Markus reached out to you yesterday morning sharing some information (one of them has since changed), asking for your opinion. You're mentioned the issue of licensing and we have discussed your point and, in fact, decided to adjust the licensing to allow the specific case you've asked for. This was just yesterday (Canadian yesterday), so I don't think we became silent. Thank you for sharing your concerns here, though. Let me explain why: > > - I need to sign a contract to transfer all publishing rights to the > LPI. > - I would get paid to write a unit. Not that I mind that, it's just > rather, well, new as far as I know the LPI. > - There is a git repo in use but it seems to be only open to > contributors who signed this contract. > > This is all true. We're doing this to be able to set expectations and compensate our contributors at least a little for their time and efforts. This is certainly different to a pure volunteer project which, for the contributors, may have a different relation of freedom vs. compensation. The learning materials have proven that this approach works well and reliably produces high quality outputs. On that note, we've always been offering a small compensation to our SMEs working on exam content. I think this is just fair. > > - The final materials will be licensed with a Creative Commons > Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The > "NonCommercial-NoDerivatives" part makes me worry about this. Why not GPL, > LGPL, FDL? Does this mean I can not give a StarIT training unless I pay the > LPI? What is the goal? > > Licensing is one of the issues that were still in discussion until very recently. Just yesterday we settled on a CC-BY-ND license for StartIT which would explicitly allow commercial usage of the materials. Let me be clear on this: You can give a StartIT training without paying anything to LPI. You can use StartIT for free. So I hope somebody can explain to me what the plan is here, because I can't > seem to find it online. > > AFAIK the LPI is a non-profit foundation that publishes certification > levels and receives income from exams. It has been that way for 20 years > and I always thought this was an open source certification body that was in > the highest regard worldwide. > This is true, but LPI is more than just that. We are an organization supporting anyone working in the field of open source. That is why we have a membership program now and that is why we create learning materials where we see a need that is not addressed by the market. > So, to keep my rant(?) short, I am left with a few questions I hope > somebody can answer publicly (on this list is fine): > > - Is the LPI transforming into a publishing house for educational > materials? (please don't say it has always been a publishing house for > exams. I know) > > > - Is LPI moving away from its open source roots. And, if so, what is > the direction? > > > - Why is the repo with the development of the StartIT project > closed/hidden/not-public/hidden-somewhere? > > Our mission statement (https://www.lpi.org/about-lpi/our-purpose) says LPI's mission 'is to promote the use of open source by supporting people who work with it'. This may of course include publishing educational materials, although educational materials are not a direct source of revenue. You've stated that there is a demand for StartIT yourself, so it perfectly falls into our mission. We are implementing it in a way that we consider pragmatic for the specific aspects of this kind of product, we invite anyone to join us if they agree to be part of this process, we make it available for free for anyone, we're not monetizing it at all. I don't see LPI turning into a commercial publishing house at all. Even if you refrain from contributing to StartIT as it currently is, I would still like to encourage you to consider StartIT as a base for your courses. It doesn't cost you anything and you might still like the content. Fabian -- Fabian Thorns <[email protected]> GPG: F1426B12 Director of Product Development, Linux Professional Institute
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