It is a traditional business model (mostly for growing their influence) to provide a certification process for software consultants in your ecosystem – Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft all have their certification for individuals and companies, heck you can even get one for Linux . In the traditional model companies do it to grow influence and increase quality assurance, while some like the LPI actually make money through the fees, materials and lessons.
As a hands-on FLOSS person I do not think very highly of most of those processes and certificates, and neither do many of you, I believe. However, I can not deny that especially for the more traditional businesses, which do not necessarily read another persons code to confirm their professionalism, these do work. They offer a base insurance to the business from the big vendor, that they do things the proper way the vendor approves about. In a less formal way, you could understand them as endorsements of those vendors – working similar as being a "core django contributor" will open you doors and jobs at many companies. But there are only so many core contributors for any project and they are usually overloaded with job offers – they don't want to take – because they are just the most visible people in the project.
But what if, the project could shed more light on all those amazing patch-contributors, which work closely at but still outside of the main circle and help them get gigs from companies, who'd love to have work done by people approved of by the official project? And what if the project could make money off offering that match-making and endorsement service? Just consider, how many people would be willing to spend 5% of their earnings (contractually ensured and tax-deductible for the person) to be listed on djangoproject.com in an "official consultants marketplace"-section – especially if they knew that money was spend on making Django better and more popular! This is only the simplest idea I have about an consultancy market place.
As I briefly mention in the discussion about HaaS, if you think @freakboy3742's idea just a little further, you could organise essentially any task in a market place system. Not only tasks directly for the project but also general consultancy gigs (which only paying monthly subscribers can put up) among the team and wider project audience could be organised in such a manner – including features the core team approved of (and offers mentoring-style assistance with), that some companies want to have in urgently. The payment would flow directly between the individual and the company, but a small fee is added for the project directly. Think of elance per FLOSS project but instead of cheap it optimizes for quality, and not just anyone can take things up, only recognized project consultants can (TO BE DEFINED!). And any company could turn away offers if they don't like the track record of that persons project contributions.
This would allow a project to quickly and easily grow its contributor and supporter base, while helping companies, who are in dire need for expertise on the project to find suitable people, as well as bring more money to the project as well as the entire ecosystem around it. I think this is particularly suited for hot-and-upcoming-things (like React, Redux) as well as projects with a big audience already (Django, Angular, Flask). What do you think?
It is a traditional business model (mostly for growing their influence) to provide a certification process for software consultants in your ecosystem – Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft all have their certification for individuals and companies, heck you can even get one for Linux . In the traditional model companies do it to grow influence and increase quality assurance, while some like the LPI actually make money through the fees, materials and lessons.
As a hands-on FLOSS person I do not think very highly of most of those processes and certificates, and neither do many of you, I believe. However, I can not deny that especially for the more traditional businesses, which do not necessarily read another persons code to confirm their professionalism, these do work. They offer a base insurance to the business from the big vendor, that they do things the proper way the vendor approves about. In a less formal way, you could understand them as endorsements of those vendors – working similar as being a "core django contributor" will open you doors and jobs at many companies. But there are only so many core contributors for any project and they are usually overloaded with job offers – they don't want to take – because they are just the most visible people in the project.
But what if, the project could shed more light on all those amazing patch-contributors, which work closely at but still outside of the main circle and help them get gigs from companies, who'd love to have work done by people approved of by the official project? And what if the project could make money off offering that match-making and endorsement service? Just consider, how many people would be willing to spend 5% of their earnings (contractually ensured and tax-deductible for the person) to be listed on djangoproject.com in an "official consultants marketplace"-section – especially if they knew that money was spend on making Django better and more popular! This is only the simplest idea I have about an consultancy market place.
As I briefly mention in the discussion about HaaS, if you think @freakboy3742's idea just a little further, you could organise essentially any task in a market place system. Not only tasks directly for the project but also general consultancy gigs (which only paying monthly subscribers can put up) among the team and wider project audience could be organised in such a manner – including features the core team approved of (and offers mentoring-style assistance with), that some companies want to have in urgently. The payment would flow directly between the individual and the company, but a small fee is added for the project directly. Think of elance per FLOSS project but instead of cheap it optimizes for quality, and not just anyone can take things up, only recognized project consultants can (TO BE DEFINED!). And any company could turn away offers if they don't like the track record of that persons project contributions.
This would allow a project to quickly and easily grow its contributor and supporter base, while helping companies, who are in dire need for expertise on the project to find suitable people, as well as bring more money to the project as well as the entire ecosystem around it. I think this is particularly suited for hot-and-upcoming-things (like React, Redux) as well as projects with a big audience already (Django, Angular, Flask). What do you think?