free software to paid work
Hi
Not sure if this is really the right place for this.
In an effort to reach out to people and recruit much needed help for
contributors to free software, I just wondered if there were any
examples of where people have gained either full time work or full time
education places as a result of contributing to free software.
While this may not always be the primary motivation any contributions
are seen by the community as valuable and should be seen by employers or
educational establishments as something that should be taken seriously.
My current contribution is to write documentation for the TorIOS
distribution (based on Debian) but it is designed for older systems. I
understand how much my contribution is valued.
How can we help people translate what they contribute to something that
they can use as evidence for applications.
If there are a few clear examples of where someone has started out just
contributing and gone on to paid or gaining good qualifications it may
help me generally, but also actually help me sell the idea of
contributing to the right people.
Near me there are lots of group workign with young people for example so
IT teaching seems to be limited to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, outlook
etc, and much less on developing skills in the more technical areas.
I have found I learn far more by contributing than I have ever done in
most college courses. So with the right support it should be possible
to build some highly skilled people.
We know how widespread the use of free software is, so we need to
educate about this too, most people have never heard of Linux, Debian
etc, so think everything is Microsoft, or they don't see the demand for
these skills.
Just a thought, if anyone can help or advise this would be great.
would be great to be able to find more people to help contribute to free
software.
Paul
Paul
--
Paul Sutton
http://www.zleap.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zleap/
gnupg : 7D6D B682 F351 8D08 1893 1E16 F086 5537 D066 302D
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