BSD Certification Group Publishes Survey Results

Yesterday the BSD Certification Group published the results of their task analysis survey. The 147 page report is available here.

I found these excerpts interesting:

The survey saw an "often expressed desire to see the eventual certifications emphasize advanced achievement and mastery of Unix knowledge in general and BSD usage in particular. Yet, desires that the certification be difficult to obtain were balanced by the concern to not neglect younger, enter level candidates or those more experienced who are coming to BSD from other computing platforms."

"A proposition that specific knowledge of all BSDs be required was rejected by most in favor of emphasis on general Unix concepts, with an understanding of how and why BSD is unique. 'Linux vs. BSD' style topics were commonly rejected. A focus on BSD similarities instead of BSD differences was more often expressed. Interestingly, the least preference was for coverage of only a single BSD."

Among all respondents, almost 78% used FreeBSD, almost 41% used OpenBSD, almost 16% used NetBSD, and almost 4% used DragonFly BSD. The "Other BSD" group was bigger than DragonFly at almost 7%! Many Darwin and Mac OS users reported in as "other."

A huge portion of the survey involves reproducing survey taker comments. I am not sure how the document itself was created, but I cannot use Adobe Reader to highlight and copy text into documents like this blog. The .pdf is also not searchable.

The survey represents a massive amount of work by the BSD Certification Group and I thank them for their efforts! You can read the press release here.