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

[Lennart Regebro]

On 2/22/06, Lukasz Lakomy <lukasz at altcontrol.pl> 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/