The good news about open source, Cobol, and mobile jobs

In a bleak year, open source employment stayed relatively strong, as did the demand for Cobol skills

Journalists are often the bearers of bad news; it simply comes with the territory. And with the economy in the tank, there's no shortage of ugly stories to cover. So I'm always pleased when there's a legitimate bit of good news to write about. And counterintuitively enough, three of my columns this year contained good news about employment for techies, despite the downturn.

Open source jobs remain in good shape
In July, I looked at a report that showed that as many as 15 percent of the available IT jobs call for open-source skills. Although the report was written before the financial meltdown gathered steam, it still turned out to be a good indicator of the job market.

I know that because several months later, a careful look at the layoffs cascading though Silicon Valley showed that few of the job losses -- and there were many -- took place at companies primarily focused on open source.

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