Interesting opinion in the articles section on the recent Advogato statistics:

Certification level is irrelevant, posted 3 Nov 2000 by Zaitcev

Only the list of certifiers is interesting.

This was brought up already when a bunch of FreeBSD goofs showed up and certified each other as master. One of them was close to the trust root and the rest is history.

Raph told you already that certification works only if majority of Advogato members apply the certification metrics as instructed. Instead, the majority uses certification as an old buddy network, with levels higher for those who are better known to them.

This shows a disturbing lack of faith in the trust metrics.

As I feature quite high (at 5) as certifier, I can't spare this comment. The folks I certified as master, deserve that title. If you think otherwise, send me mail.

Point is, that Linux and FreeBSD developer communities are different beasts. So in my case, as FreeBSD developer, it is natural that I know more of these people (not in the sense of knowing their name but in the sense of having read from and discussed with them and using their software for years) than in the Linux camp.

Pretty normal if you ask me. The free software world is not just Linux.