I can offer some insight into one certification process: I have been through the Microsoft Mobile certification for our Smartphone and PocketPC client, and I know this process required a large infrastructure behind it. In that case, there is a third party company doing the certification which consisted of testing that the interface features of the software met Microsoft's Mobile Software guidelines. If a new version of your software is released you had to get it recertified. The benefit of "winning" certification means that the software will get exposure on Microsoft's online mobile catalog of software (very valuable exposure). The other benefit is getting to advertise the product with a "Designed for Windows Mobile" logo.
You can see the similarity here between that program and the one you are proposing. One reason the Microsoft process is successful is because they had a third party company willing to build the infrastructure to provide the testing service. Of course, the third party company didn't do this for free - the fee for compliance testing was $1,400 per product version (reasonable as cert programs go). I suspect Microsoft also subsidized the process as well. I know this is going to be unpopular, but it may be wise to consider such a fee-based compliance testing process. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rachel Blackman Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 4:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [jdev] Jabber Certification Program So, Jabber has been around for a while now. It's a great architecture, we've all drunk the Kool-Aid as it were... but I've recently found a lot of frustration in one area, and I know from discussion in the jdev chatroom that I am far from the only one. The thing is, there are all these very cool Jabber featuresets out there, but lots of them are not necessarily supported. Nor (other than peer pressure) is there much incentive for people to implement certain things. I can look at Jabber and go 'wow, pubsub is a cool backend system, Stream Initiation will let me do a lot of really cool things down the line' and be excited, but your average IM user (for instance, my mother or father) will look at Jabber and go 'why can't I set a nice little picture like under MSN? And why can't I use bold in my messages?' and so on. Jabber is, architecturally, probably the most advanced IM protocol out there, and it's a godsend to developers... but to end-users, it doesn't really replace the AIM featureset or whatever. XHTML-IM has been a JEP for a rather long time, and few clients implement it (and moreover, some of them implement it in a nonstandard and wacky way!), and it's a fairly basic feature many IM end users look for. And there's no real incentive (other than peer pressure, as I said) for a client author to implement XHTML, so it ends up getting pushed further and further down TODO lists and suchnot. So there was discussion in the chatroom today about a compliance and certification program, with varying levels of certification and differing requirements for the levels. Only certified clients would be on jabber.org's client list, certified clients would get the right to use a little 'certified' banner on their websites and in their documentation or whatever, and it would ensure featuresets /do/ get implemented for end-users. I am writing up a quick proposal about how to do this. If enough folks like it (and there's not too much ensuing flamethrower usage in my direction), I will write it up in JEP format and submit it. ** PROPOSED JABBER CERTIFICATION PROGRAM ** Each certification would have a year attached to it. For instance, 'Jabber Basic Certified 2004' for a banner on a site. A certification only lasts until the end of a calendar year, and then you have to re-apply for certification; having a certification for a given year is not a guarantee you will have it next year. Certifications can have required features, and recommended features (i.e. 'MUST' and 'SHOULD'). The certification requirements for a calendar year would be set by a Jabber Certification Board, presumably appointed by the Council. The requirements for a given year would be decided on in July of the previous year, giving individuals six months to implement the features (and apply for certification ahead of time). For instance, if this program were in effect, next month the Certification Board would have to issue the certification requirements for 2005, giving all the developers time to implement the features and apply for certification before the end of 2004 (and thus the expiration of their existing certification). To be certified, you would need to get a copy of the software in question to the Board to use, and they'd run it against some kind of validation suite. Presumably they'd have a process for testing, either certain automated things they could point to or a script for hand-testing it all. You could apply for more than one certification. A couple examples of certification types are shown below. These are NOT actual proposals, just examples of what a certification list might be. You'd actually want much longer and more detailed certification criteria, of course. Jabber Client Minimal - suitable for mobile or embedded clients - required : roster management - required : jid-to-jid chatting - recommended: groupchat-1.0 Jabber Client Intermediate - Suitable as a 'generic' client - required : all of Jabber Client Minimal - required : file transfer - required : disco - required : caps - recommended: XHTML-IM - recommended: avatars Jabber Client Extended - Glitzier clients - required : all of Jabber Client Intermediate - required : xdata - required : MU-C - recommended: pubsub ...and so on. There would be certifications for servers, and you could even add usability guidelines as recommended things to the Client specifications, and so on. Any thoughts? --Rachel _______________________________________________ jdev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://jabberstudio.org/mailman/listinfo/jdev _______________________________________________ jdev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://jabberstudio.org/mailman/listinfo/jdev
