Today in Open Source: The Ubuntu Edge phone is dead. Plus: Open source jobs are smokin' hot, and write about Linux to enhance your career prospects The Death of the Ubuntu Edge Phone Well, it didn’t take long for Canonical’s crowdsourced phone to die a quick death. The Ubuntu Edge phone is dead, despite Canonical having raised more than $12 million dollars in a massive crowdfunding effort. Canonical’s attempt to raise $32 million to build the Ubuntu Edge, a powerful phone that can double as a desktop when docked with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, has failed. The crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo took in “only” $12.8 million before the deadline passed a few hours ago. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth had told BBC that the Edge would be such a high-end device that “we would have been bringing the future forward a year or two at least.” But this doesn’t mean Ubuntu phones themselves are dead. The smartphone interface for the Ubuntu operating system is still being developed, and carriers around the world have signed on as potential launch partners. More at Ars Technica I was very skeptical about the Ubuntu Edge, as I noted in an earlier article. Given the market share and popularity of iOS and Android phones, it’s going to be tough for anybody else to get a foothold in the mobile phone market. Even Microsoft has been unable to do it with their Windows Phone products. Still, I give Canonical a lot of credit for making the attempt. I can also appreciate the passion of those who contributed financially to Canonical’s effort. There was clearly a small minority of people who wanted to see the Ubuntu Edge go into production. The money they contributed will be refunded over the next week or so. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Still, there will be other Ubuntu based phones brought to market, according to the article. So perhaps there’s still hope that Ubuntu can become an alternative to Android or iOS. I’m still not optimistic about that idea, but I wish them well as it’s always better for consumers to have more choices. Open Source Jobs Are Smokin’ Hot! SJVN has an insightful article up on Smart Bear about just how hot the open source jobs market really is these days. Yes, we’re in a bad economy, but you wouldn’t know it by reading Steven’s article. Open source is where the jobs are in technology these days. Here’s a brief list of some of the hot job areas in open source (from the table in the article): Big Data Hadoop HTML 5 Cloud Python Ruby on Rails If you’re in the market for an open source job, you may want to check Dice.com, SimplyHired and some of the other job sites to see which employers are hiring in your area. Goli said, “The rise of open source jobs is part of a broader trend. We’re seeing tremendous tech job growth everywhere.” According to Goli and the Dice job trends, the hot areas are cloud, especially OpenStack; Big Data, Hadoop in particular; and the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python). Other really hot areas include the Solr open source search engine and anything with mobile phones, especially Android.” More at Smart Bear The jobs are definitely out there, so start looking around, and good luck to you in your job search. Boot Your IT Career By Writing About Linux Speaking of career stuff, Linux Career has a very interesting article about how to enhance your IT career by writing about Linux. The article contains some useful strategies for getting involved in Linux writing, and how to establish a web presence that might further boost your career. The World Wide Web has become an extremely strong source of information. Job seekers search for jobs on online job boards, while recruiters search for potential employees by listing their Web profiles. Such head hunting is, in particular, common when looking for a Linux professional. Numerous ways are available for an IT professional to establish their Web presence. One of them is writing about GNU/Linux or, in general, free or open source software. It is extremely beneficial for your IT career to publish on Linux related websites as a volunteer writer and, at the same time, enhance your Web presence. More at Linux Career I think this is a wonderful idea. I’ve been writing about Linux for years, and one of the things I’ve noticed about it is that the more I write, the more I learn. Yep, when you write about a Linux topic, you learn a great deal. This leads you to other Linux-related topics, and so on and so on. All of that can be very beneficial as you look for a job, and it can also help bolster your skill sets and knowledge base if you already have a job. If you prefer not to be a volunteer writer as mentioned in the article, then consider setting up your own blog about Linux. You can develop your own audience while building a strong web presence, and you can develop the aura of a Linux expert in your particular topic area. Open Source