Membership Program Eligibility

Member Eligibility Criteria

Version 3: July 18, 2019

 

Introduction

In order to serve as community-driven organization that is accountable to open source practitioners who have entrusted the Linux Professional Institute (“LPI”) to verify their skills and support their profession, LPI’s bylaws (Section 2) call for and define Members who, along with other benefits, are entitled to vote for the entirety of its Board of Directors.

Membership Types

Currently, there is only one category of membership, one kind of Member, the individual. There are no corporate memberships, student memberships or associate memberships. [2.1(a)] While LPI intends to create programs for students and supporters of LPI who do not meet the requirements below, these people will not be eligible to vote for the Board of Directors or other benefits extended exclusively to Members.

Member Eligibility Criteria

Here is an overview of the requirements for membership. Items in square brackets refer to bylaw sections.

1: Must Provide Accurate Contact Information

We need to be able to reach you for meeting announcements, elections and other essential notices, as part of our efforts to be transparent and accountable to our membership [3.4, 3.5]. We will not send promotional or partner materials to Members without their consent. All communications will be conformant with our Privacy Policy and the anti-spam laws of Canada.

2: Must be Certified by Linux Professional Institute

LPI is governed by its certified professionals. If you have ever achieved a certification in either the Linux Professional (aka LPIC) or Open Technology tracks (such as the DevOps Tools Engineer or the BSD Specialist), you’re eligible.

Educational certificate programs, such as “Linux Essentials”, are not eligible for membership.

For holders of active Linux Professional Institute certifications

Membership is limited to individuals who hold an active LPI professional level certification.  Although, we have an option for inactive certification holders (see below), if your certification is currently active, you are eligible for membership once the remaining criteria are also met.

For holders of inactive Linux Professional Institute certifications

Holders of inactive certifications are invited to apply at any time.  However, full membership eligibility will be withheld until ⅓ of the Professional Development Units (PDUs) required for a 3 year cycle are claimed and accepted (i.e. 20 PDUs).  None of the claimed activities can be over 12 months old.  Upon successful submission of the PDU claims and meeting the remaining criteria, full membership will be granted and certifications for which PDUs were claimed will be reinstated to active status.

For holders of “CompTIA Linux+ Powered by LPI” certifications

Those possessing CompTIA Linux+ Powered by LPI certifications need to register their credentials with LPI in order for them to be recognized as an LPI certification holder. CompTIA Linux+ credentials that are not from a program indicated as “powered by LPI” are not directly eligible but may use the method described below for holders of “other open source certifications”.  The “powered by LPI” exams were called LX0-101/LX0-102/LX0-103/LX0-104.
Instructions on claiming your LPIC-1 certification are here.

For holders of other open source certifications

Programs to enable holders of other open source certifications (such as RHCE and LFCE) are under consideration. While these methods are not the most immediate priority, we should start an incremental campaign to promote membership to these communities, both to determine interest but also to build bridges between LPI and other certification bodies and open source vendors.

3: Must Agree to our Code of Conduct

In today’s business environment, technical skills are not sufficient on their own.  As such, LPI require that our Members uphold themselves to a code of ethics and professional conduct. Derived from similar codes developed for professional associations and open source projects, the code of conduct addresses ethical issues related to:

• Protection of the public interest
• Demonstration of personal integrity
• Maintenance of confidentiality and privacy
• Showing respect for colleagues and collaborators

4: Must Accept the Membership Agreement

Please read the Membership Agreement before you decide to join us.  As part of the process of joining as a member, acceptance of the membership agreement is an important step.

5: Must Agree to Pay Membership Dues

The membership dues schedule is established by the Board of Directors. The amount to be paid for dues is designed in such a way that it does not exceed the cost of certifying for LPIC-1 or LPIC-2 through simply re-taking exams every five years. This enables LPI to offer membership as both an easier and less expensive path to maintain active certification status.

Additionally, we acknowledge the need to adjust pricing for membership dues in different countries in order to aid in local affordability of our programs and membership.  Similar to the pricing of certification exams, membership dues are based on a graduated scale using the Human Development Index as published by the United Nations Development Program.  More about UN HDI can be found here:

http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

As a result of combining these two factors, membership dues are:

1 year

• 75/65/45 USD
• 65 euros/55 euros (very high HDI/high HDI)
• 7500 yen

3 years

• 180/156/108 USD
• 155 euros/130 euros
• 18000 yen

Dues are exclusive of local VAT and dues in arrears of three months shall cause the termination of membership [2.5(a)(i)] and the individual will need to reapply.