Ask HN: Certification services for OSS professionals

3 points by seele 14y ago ↗ HN

Hi everyone,

I've build a first prototype of web platform that will allow companies and individuals involved in open source projects easily provide professional certification services around their products / technologies.

Do you think there is any demand for such product?

IMHO the service will be valuable for:

a) OSS authors and contributors - as a source of money to support their efforts,

b) professional users of OSS (developers, admins, etc.) - giving them opportunity to improve their knowledge, prove their professional credibility, promote their expertise,

c) clients using OSS in their projects and businesses - making easier for them to find experts in specific products / technologies (esp. less popular).

I will be happy to hear your feedback on the idea.

In the meanwhile we're preparing for private beta.

If you're interested in beta invitations, please visit http://www.certihub.com/

Best regards, DD

PS. I have a technical background, plus tech and design skills, yet I'm looking for a partner with experience in front-end development (HTML5/CSS/jQuery) and UI & UX design. I believe that magic things happen when you collaborate with talented people, so if you're interested, please contact me at certihubhq /at/ gmail.com.

4 comments

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kesipyc 14y ago ↗

I think it's a valid idea. I'm not aware of anything similar to this. I can see it shining especially for clients finding experts in less popular technologies.

There are two crucial points for this project to succeed: 1) Platform must be recognizable by clients - those certificates has to be acknowledged. 2) A few popular open source projects should join with their products

seele 14y ago ↗

Thanks for feedback! About the recognition and acknowledgement - the idea is to allow OSS authors / maintainers / contributors / OSS project team members build and maintain their "authorised" certification programs as a part of the project (just like they maintain documentation).

ldebowczyk 14y ago ↗

Interesting idea. Would be ideal if Apache Software Foundation joined to your project with certificates for palette of their products.

fridi 14y ago ↗

Success of this project depends on participation of subjects which accept this way of certification.