The Secret of Morrolinux’s Success – Part 2: The Future

This article contains the second part of Massimiliano “Max” Roveri, Linux Professional Institute’s Community Manager, interview with Moreno Razzoli, aka Morrolinux, Linux champion, YouTuber, and, now, LPI Partner. 

In the first leg of the interview, we talked with Moreno about the origins of his passion for FLOSS and the Morrolinux channel.

The Linux and Open Source champion spreads the voice about FLOSS to his 65k subscribers YouTube Channel and is now a Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Platinum Training Partner.

In this second part, we travel back to the future, with Moreno highlighting some of the most intriguing FLOSS projects and imagining what could come next for them, while sharing some thoughts about his own professional future.

Moreno, what do you expect from being now an LPI Partner, and what is this new position bringing to your courseware and YouTube Channel?

It’s more about what I want to achieve than what I expect.

First and foremost, I want to be part of the movement bringing the concepts and values of FLOSS and certifications to a broader audience in Italy.

There is no reason for not having a mainstream culture of IT certification in Italy, as it happens in other countries. I want to contribute to the awareness of the importance of having FLOSS skills and having them certified, so you can demonstrate that you own those skills and knowledge.

According to data from the 2020 Open Source Jobs Report, the demand for professionals with skills in Linux and open source technologies is dramatically and constantly growing: 93% of hiring managers say they experience difficulty finding open source talent, and 63% say their organizations have started to support open source projects with the explicit aim of hiring people with these skills.

Demand far exceeds supply, indeed.

There is also a need for more effective communication between the corporate world of professional certifications and the general audience.

You have a vast pool of professionals and aspiring professionals of all ages and levels who do not have a clear view of the IT certifications landscape and the scale of the impact that gaining certification can have on their career.

My goal as an LPI partner is also, without a doubt, to help this conversation.

Thanks to the partnership with LPI, I will also be able to make the LPI’s certification exams more accessible to those who follow me on YouTube through a substantial discount on the purchase of vouchers.

For my students on Udemy who want to certify the skills acquired during the course, on the other hand, the exam will be even more accessible thanks to a tailored coupon for them. 

Morrolinux, and Morrolinux as an LPI Partner: What’s next? What do you expect from yourself, from the partnership, and (why not ask) from Linux and the open source landscape in 1, 5, 10 years?

One of the many things that amazes me about the FLOSS environment is that the open source paradigm is changing the world for the better.

FLOSS is great, altogether. But some projects are simply amazing. Some examples? These  are my favorites.

The Open Source Ecology project, for example, provides an open technology platform for the do-it-yourself construction of 50 different industrial machines essential for village development. This project is particularly significant in developing countries because it gives local people access to otherwise unavailable resources. 

The Open Biomedical Initiative is a global non-profit organization set up to support open collaboration in designing biomedical machines and prostheses at a fraction of the cost of commercial rates, making them accessible to anyone: You just download the design and send it to a 3D printer. The best part is, of course, the openness: All the designs are adaptable to specific needs. 

Another particularly relevant front on which to unite efforts is that of environmental sustainability. The Open Sustainable Technology list is constantly being updated and brings together the most relevant open source projects in renewable energy and beyond. It’s a trove of riches, ranging from freely accessible datasets to algorithms and libraries released under FLOSS licenses that can be freely modified and redistributed for the benefit of the community.

Open source has revolutionized the way of working in so many sectors that the field of software development seems to be the most trivial example.

Still, the phenomenon itself is far from trivial. We are not talking only about small and medium-sized enterprises that can develop their solutions faster and with a higher standard of quality thanks to Open Source tools and libraries. Even the ”Tech giants” (FAANG & Co., if you like) entrust a large part of their infrastructure and technology stack to open source projects and technologies. They usually ”return the favor” by contributing code or money to these projects and releasing, from time to time, some library or framework for internal use as an open source project for the community.

When it comes to the complex relationship between FLOSS and Bich Tech, and, in a broader way, FLOSS and its business side, I think there is still a lot to be done to consolidate the long-term sustainability of the open source model in the business-oriented environment. There are still too many actors that profit from Open Source without giving anything back to the related projects; on the other side, we have organizations that are simply not big enough or strong enough to give back to the community.

I see, though, that something has changed after recent events in the area of computer security: The issue of technical and economic support has become very clear, and we are definitely on the right track.

So I am pretty optimistic in this regard. Perhaps in the next five years, the issue will be solved (hopefully, at least).

And what about in ten years?

Ten years is the equivalent of a geological era in this field.

Last year we sent a fully open source self-driving helicopter to Mars…At this rate, I can’t even imagine what might happen even just in a few months! I would love to hear in the comments what our readers think about that 😉

As for me, I’m not particularly eager to sit on my hands: I’m working to keep multiple side activities going (it’s part of my curious nature), but one thing I’ll do for sure is dedicate more time into teaching courses (both in-person and on-demand) and producing high quality content on YouTube.

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