Careers in Open Source

With the deepening economic slowdown enterprises have started looking hard at optimizing their IT budgets, in some cases even resorting to free and Open Source solutions and softwares to address to their needs. The adoption of Open Source in enterprises will automatically imply a need for employees having familiarity with Open Source technologies. Here we look at what all opportunities that you can look at to start a career in the Open Source domain

Today, many applications are being developed in the Open Source environment and are gaining wider acceptance. Open Source is no longer synonymous to Linux and Java, but has matured to several middle-ware, ERP, BI and other enterprise applications. A recent survey by Gartner suggests an increasing role for Open Source as part of business strategies in the coming years. Numerous developers from around the world are contributing to Open Source software and the ratio of contributing developers is witnessing a higher growth. Sun Microsystems, Google, SourceForge, Apache and many other organizations have several Open Source projects hosted and supported by them.

How to start a career in Open Source

Open Source is a wide domain and there isn't any fixed path that one can tread to make a career. There are two ways in which one can kick-start a career in Open Source technologies. The first will pay you while the second will cost you. You can get trained in one of the Open Source technologies and subsequently be hired by an enterprise where it is used.