When the BSD Certification Group Inc. formed in 2005 it posed the question would the BSD community benefit from and assist in the creation of a certification exam which assesses the skills of BSD system administrators? The answer quickly proved to be a resounding yes! and many of the successes seen in 2005 are due to the sustained contributions of thousands of dedicated individuals throughout the world.
Infrastructure costs are often significant, especially for a newly formed non-profit organization. We are fortunate in that several ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have donated hardware and bandwidth and a team of system administrators donate their DNS, mail server, web design, database, scripting and security skills to maintain the BSD Certification Group's servers. This is a small testament to the spirit of the BSD community, the reliability of BSD systems and the skills of those who administer them.
The community has also played a key role in the establishment of the frameworks required to build a respected and useful assessment of BSD system administration skills. Input gathered through the Task Analysis Survey, BSD Usage Survey, the certification mailing list, and audience participation at technical conferences provided the data necessary to determine exam audience and the skills which should be assessed.