Re: [Zope3-Users] The Zope Software Certification Program and CommonRepository Proposal
On 2/22/06, Lukasz Lakomy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello Stephan and all > 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. > > 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. Doing these things requires that you make a complete certification scheme, with several courses and tests to make sure that it people have thr right knowledge, and update courses and update tests for new versions, and handling of the database of certified people and companies and making sure it's up to date and all that. All in all there would have to be several full time people involved in this. So, it's quite evident that this is nothing the community has any sort of capacity to handle. There are however, companies that do this. But as far as I know, they do it because another company pays them. Developing the courses and the tests is a heavy investment, that has to be slowly recouperated over time by certifying people, and certification companies would probably not want to take that risk with a small market such as Zope development. That would men that the Zope foundation would have to pay for it, and I don't think it can afford to, and even if it could, there are better ways. However, the Zope Foundation provides an alternative. Organisations and people can become members of the foundation. I don't remember the details, you'd have to check out that discussion instead. Although it's not certification, it provides people and companies with some sort of stamp of "we are commited and knowledgable in this area" which of course is the whole point of certification. :) -- Lennart Regebro, Nuxeo http://www.nuxeo.com/ CPS Content Management http://www.cps-project.org/ ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
Re: [Zope3-Users] The Zope Software Certification Program and CommonRepository Proposal
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 ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
RE: [Zope3-Users] The Zope Software Certification Program and CommonRepository Proposal
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. 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. 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. Lukasz Lakomy > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Stephan Richter > Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 10:31 PM > To: zope@zope.org; zope-dev@zope.org; zope3-dev@zope.org; > zope3-users@zope.org > Subject: [Zope3-Users] The Zope Software Certification Program > and CommonRepository Proposal > > > Hello everyone, > > With the development of Zope 3, the Zope developers committed to a new > development process and higher software quality guidelines. With > the adoption > of Zope 3 technologies in the wider Zope community, we should also start > using the process for third party package development. > > I have spent the last two weeks working on a proposal that defines a Zope > Software Certification Program (ZSCP) and a Common Repository > that implements > this process. The proposal is attached to this mail. I welcome > any comments > about it! > > In the pre-publication phase of the proposal, I have worked with a small > committee to receive initial feedback. For the purpose of this > proposal, I > will not be representing a particular Zope sub-community, but > instead act as > a mediator among the parties of interest. I will try my best to > answer all > concerns and comments in a neutral manner. > > I would like to thank all pre-proposal committee members for > their time and > valuable input. > > Thanks for your time! > > Regards, > Stephan > > P.S.: Sorry for the cross post! > -- > Stephan Richter > CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student) > Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training > ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
Re: [Zope3-Users] The Zope Software Certification Program and CommonRepository Proposal
On Monday 20 February 2006 21:32, Brett Haydon wrote: > Hi there, > > Certification would go some way to separating mature projects from those in > their infancy, but in my mind what the existing Plone/Zope product > repositories lack most is a mechanism for user feedback. > > I would like to see: > 1. Some kind of self-submission categorizing (or classification) as per the > existing attempts at categorization > 2. A peer vote based ranking system that can be used as a sort, with a > nominal minimum number of votes before it can be ranked. > 3. Another sort by 'popular' packages - ie by the number of votes above > average > 4. Certified 1-4 packages getting listed first > 5. User comments > > I think this would go a long way to identify those little gems that > otherwise only get picked up by accident or referral from the mailing lists > because the author has no real interest in the process, and needs cajoling > just to write up some adequate docs. Certification processes seem likely to > reflect the existing use of a package rather than encourage new development > or innovation. Note that this proposal is merely about process and quality of software. It is not in the scope of the proposal to provide a software distribution center or a complete development platform. There is already software for most of those other topics and I did not want to reinvent the wheel with this proposal. All of the information collected by the ZSCP process can and should be reused in any other software as seen fit. In fact, the point of specifying the package (meta-)data so formally is so they can be reused. I have also already implemented the parsers and writers for all of the data. Since this code will be publically available, any other Web site or software can reuse it to process the data. I have actually addressed this issue in a Q&A: For such a process it seems to be useful to have an issue tracker, special mailing lists and/or an advanced buildbot setup. Why are those technologies not addressed in the proposal? This proposal is *not* about technical solutions. It is about defining a process and laying the implementation of this process via a community repository. The purpose of the proposal is to establish an initial set of guidelines/rules and not to discuss the technical implementation. Regards, Stephan -- Stephan Richter CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student) Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
RE: [Zope3-Users] The Zope Software Certification Program and CommonRepository Proposal
Hi there, Certification would go some way to separating mature projects from those in their infancy, but in my mind what the existing Plone/Zope product repositories lack most is a mechanism for user feedback. I would like to see: 1. Some kind of self-submission categorizing (or classification) as per the existing attempts at categorization 2. A peer vote based ranking system that can be used as a sort, with a nominal minimum number of votes before it can be ranked. 3. Another sort by 'popular' packages - ie by the number of votes above average 4. Certified 1-4 packages getting listed first 5. User comments I think this would go a long way to identify those little gems that otherwise only get picked up by accident or referral from the mailing lists because the author has no real interest in the process, and needs cajoling just to write up some adequate docs. Certification processes seem likely to reflect the existing use of a package rather than encourage new development or innovation. Cheers, Brett ___ Zope3-users mailing list Zope3-users@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users
