[Zope3-Users] The Zope Software Certification Program and CommonRepository Proposal

[Stephan Richter]

On Wednesday 22 February 2006 07:24, Lukasz Lakomy wrote:
> Hello Stephan and all
>
> I think this is a very good idea. As far as I can see we are talking only
> about certification of packages. I've read all post about this and have few
> suggestions.

Yes, we are talking only about package certification. The suggestions below 
are clearly out of scope for this proposal, though I have commented on them a 
little.

> 1. Zope Certified Company. Soemthing similar to certificates given by
> commercial companies: Microsoft, Oracle etc. Sometimes there are companies
> creating comemrcial aplications with Zope. They have no possibility to make
> them open source or to contribute to Zope 3 development. But they want to
> measure their quality of work and comapre to other companies/competitors.
> So I'm thinking also about levels of maturity for company. It could be
> achieved by participations in some trainings or maybe by audits from Zope
> Corporation. It won't be free of course! It always look nice on the comapny
> website where there is a logo "Technology X certifies" and makes the
> comapny trustworthy.

I think such a company certification only makes sense in the context of the 
Zope Foundation. It is very difficult to come up with a protocol that a 
company must implement to be certified. Mmh, this begs the question: What 
does it mean for a company to be Zope certified? From the experience of 
writing the discussed proposal, I know that it is very difficult to come up 
with measurable metrics for the certification. And for companies, this might 
be even more difficult. Would we want certified companies to follow a defined 
process, like requiring UML modeling, design documents, specified development 
process (i.e. XP), etc.? To find agreement among companies will be very 
difficult.

On a totally different note: Commercial Zope software can apply for 
certification. I was very careful in the ZSCP description to not require 
fields that only Open Source packages could fulfill. On the other hand, it 
will be tricky for those companies to get their code certified, because I 
doubt that core developers are willing to sign non-disclosure agreements just 
to certify the code.

> 2. Zope Certified Programmer. They are also certificates for persons who
> know given technology. Why we cannot make it for Zope also? For example if
> a company wats to employ a programer it could state that he needs Zope
> Certified Programmer Level X. This shows the maturity of developer and be
> motivating for him. The base leves should be obtained by sending some piece
> of code, next level after some Internet chat, rest maybe on exams during
> sprints or in the company that are being certified. The knowledge for base
> levels should be checked via Internet because of long distances. It also
> should be free or very cheap, the higher levels may be more expensive.

Again, finding the right measurable metrics are very difficult. I think it 
cannot just be a generic Zope certification. For example, the certification 
exam might ask how to install Zope 2 product or setup CMF membership. Since I 
am not working with either Zope 2 or CMF, I would fail the certification 
exam. So the trick here is to define small units of certification, like 
"general Zope 3 development", "CMF Site development", "Zope 2 product 
development", "ZPT Level X", etc. Each certification level would have to 
specify exactly the knowledge that should be required. Further test questions 
would need to be developed that are kept away from public exposure. You can 
see where this goes.

BTW, I Zope Corp. tried certification for programmers once, but they seemed to 
have dropped it:

http://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zope-announce/2001-November/000618.html

Overall I would be interested in seeing such initiatives, since it would only 
strengthen the purpose of the ZF and provide value to decision makers. 
However, I have no time working on such a proposal, but I would be glad to 
comment on one.

Regards,
Stephan
-- 
Stephan Richter
CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student)
Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training