MADDOG'S DOGHOUSE

The stakeholder approach of open source broadens the pool of who can access, influence, and benefit from information technologies.

- JON "MADDOG" HALL

In 1999, I was honored to work with several groups of people who were interested in helping make GNU/ Linux a commercial success. One group was the Linux Professional Institute (LPI, www.lpi.org), who decided to implement a nonprofit certification group headquartered in Canada.

The people instigating LPI came from a wide variety of backgrounds, but had significant experience in free and open source software (FOSS) and various business backgrounds. Some were more oriented toward commercial companies, and some were more oriented toward community groups, but we all wanted the same thing: quality, respected, high-value certifications which offered a large number of options for learning the materials.

One aspect of LPI stood out. Because LPI was not a shareholder-based organization, an organization where people profited from owning part of the organization, the founders cared more about how LPI helped the community than making them a profit. The founders were stakeholders, not shareholders. One of the other goals LPI had was to be a community-based organization where people who earned the certificates were also the people who helped decide the future of LPI, along with the people who hired those certificate holders, and the ones who trained them.