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
