Software Certifications

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This page is for developing the set of Software Certifications to be managed by Schoolforge-UK ____

Contents

Background

  1. There is a clear need for users to be able to identify educational software that fits with a FLOSS approach.
  2. Schoolforge UK is available to identify and acknowledge such software.
  3. The use of a clear 'Kite Mark" would give identity to the software product and recognition to Schoolforge UK.


Varieties of Software Certification

There are many different categories that we could adopt - that should probably fall under the same 'family' of markings. Please help us by editing this list to make it resilient:

  1. FLOSS - is the software distributed under one of the strategies that we consider to fit our definitions.
  2. Operating System - is this software available to run under a FLOSS Operating System, such as Linux, without emulators or extremes of user knowledge. This should be extended to applications that run __easily__ under emulation software (eg Wine) (we would need to keep documentation on these).
  3. File Formats - does the software use Open Standards of file format as standard



Certification route

A software author or provider would need to approach Schoolforge UK for certification. FLOSS providers would be certified for free, commercial offerings would be certified for a small fee for Linux and File formats, and at cost plus a percentage for Wine certification.

I envisage that we could have a logo with a three colour traffic light underneath...

  • FLOSS - red = proprietary; orange = free but no source code; green = FLOSS
  • Operating System - red = no; orange = with emulation; green = FLOSS
  • Open File Formats - red = no; orange = yes but not with full functionality or other issue; green = yes with full functionality.

This would mean that we could immediately offer three greens to [OpenOffice.org] [the GIMP] and various other applications.

eg: OpenOffice.org: < green - green - green >

  1. Description: comprehensive set of Office Productivity tools available for wide range of operating systems
  2. FLOSS: green - http://www.openoffice.org/license.html;
  3. Operating System: green - Platforms currently supported include Microsoft Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac OS X (under X11), and FreeBSD see http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs.html
  4. File Formats: green - own file format XML defined also reads and writes defacto file formats
  5. Maintainer: RichardRothwell

A product such as Pegasus Mail http://www.pmail.com/ <orange - orange - orange >

  1. Description: free e-mail client for MS Windows and DOS:
  2. FLOSS: orange - no source code;
  3. Operating System: orange - see http://www.bytebot.net/geekdocs/pmail-wine.html for the Wine advice
  4. File Formats: orange - as the file formats are publicly defined but they do not follow any of the obvious standards http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~jaabogae/han/pf_pmfiles.html
  5. Maintainer: RichardRothwell

Questions

  • Liability

All certification would need to be tested to a reasonable standard, but disclaimers would ned to be published

  • Version Control

A supplier would need to specify which version they wanted certified - would we allow self-certification of ugrades?

  • Costs

The costs of running this service would need to be offset by grant and funding by applicants. It would not be appropriate to charge non-profit making organisations - this is not the same as saying under the [GPL] - because we are trying to encourage profit-making companies to distribute under such licences.

!!Comment Phil Driscol observed:

Another possible bullet point for the outline proposal could be that all materials produced will be e-gif compliant<http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/egif.asp>This should be worth brownie points with the office of the e-envoy.Cheers-- Phil Driscoll

!Separate Cost and FLOSS I think that separating the FLOSS/Cost INTO two points FLOSS and COST would be clearer (although not easy to SHOW as traffic lights) the new points I propose are:

  • FLOSS - red = no; orange = source code with limitations; green = FLOSS
  • COST - red = expensive; orange = affordable; green = free/no cost

Examples would be:

  1. Pegasus Mail http://www.pmail.com/ < red - green - orange - orange >
  2. Red Hat Enterprise Linux http://www.redhat.com/ < green - red - green - green >

This is explained at the [Why Separate Cost and FLOSS] page. I also think that the certificates could be formed and checked using this Wiki, [Free, Libre and Open Source Software solutions for Education] contains a list of software to start with. -- [JohnB]

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