[OSGeo-Standards] OGC Certification of OSGeo Projects [was Re: Follow up from OSGeo board meeting] [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Bruce Bannerman]

Mark, Luis,

Please see my question to Carl below.

As per below, is there anything that OGC can do to assist OSGeo Projects with the certification process?

Bruce



From: Carl Reed <creed at opengeospatial.org<mailto:creed at opengeospatial.org>>
Organization: OGC
Date: Thursday, 31 October 2013 9:26 AM
To: Bruce Bannerman <B.Bannerman at bom.gov.au<mailto:B.Bannerman at bom.gov.au>>
Cc: "standards at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:standards at lists.osgeo.org>" <standards at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:standards at lists.osgeo.org>>, George Percivall <gpercivall at opengeospatial.org<mailto:gpercivall at opengeospatial.org>>
Subject: Re: OGC Certification of OSGeo Projects [was Re: [OSGeo-Standards] Follow up from OSGeo board meeting] [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Bruce -

Thanks for the email. I know that the CITE fee structure is being discussed. However, I do not know the details as I am not part of that discussion. Luis Bermudez and Mark Reichardt can provide more up to date information on CITE fees. Sorry that I cannot be more helpful.

Cheers

Carl


From: Bruce Bannerman<mailto:B.Bannerman at bom.gov.au>
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 4:09 PM
To: Carl Reed<mailto:creed at opengeospatial.org>
Cc: standards at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:standards at lists.osgeo.org> ; George Percivall<mailto:gpercivall at opengeospatial.org>
Subject: OGC Certification of OSGeo Projects [was Re: [OSGeo-Standards] Follow up from OSGeo board meeting] [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Carl,

Wearing both my OSGeo and OGC TC hats, is there anything that OGC can do to assist open source projects get certified, e.g. waive certification fees?

Most projects do not have much in the way of funds behind them. They mainly have just volunteer time and effort.

It is in OGC's interests to have a range of open source implementations that are certified to act as reference implementations and to guide others on what is possible.

As an OGC implementing organisation that utilises open source software, we'd like to see the projects that we use certified, however we are not in a position to fund the certification process for them.

Bruce



From: Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com<mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com>>
Date: Wednesday, 30 October 2013 10:50 PM
To: Even Rouault <even.rouault at mines-paris.org<mailto:even.rouault at mines-paris.org>>
Cc: "standards at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:standards at lists.osgeo.org>" <standards at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:standards at lists.osgeo.org>>
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Standards] Follow up from OSGeo board meeting


Regarding certification, I went to read a bit on OGC site and found that :
http://www.opengeospatial.org/compliance#trademark

So the fee is not a one time thing, but a yearly one, and depends on the
"organization" revenue. This makes me wonder on how it could translate for our
community projects, let's take MapServer as an example. What is the
organization behind MapServer : OSGeo, any company offering services around
MapServer... ?


OGC licencing fee scheme seems to be designed for companies that have a
distribution monopoly on the product being certified.
If certification fees would be waived for the OSGeo project iself, what would
it mean for companies offering services around it : could they reuse the
sticker on their web site, or should they pay the fee ?

Just so, so we should probably take down our GeoServer sticker - since it does not represent testing of the bundle we currently distribute.

As for your actual question - you may have to consider the difference between project and product.

The GeoServer community offers a download (i.e. a product) which could be certified by OSGeo (perhaps at a reduced rate depending on how well the board negotiates).

The same component is actually included in several other products:
- Boundless OpenGeo Suite
- GeoSolutions GeoServer Enterprise
- OSGeo GeoNetwork Open Source

As long as it is not the community doing the packaging, the above products would not get the sticker. If they are using the component as published by the community (say out of a maven repository) a downstream project (i.e. GeoNetwork) or distribution (OSGeo Live) should be able to indicate an GeoServer as an OGC certified component (i.e. it has passed testing).

Still we are down in the weeds here - the goal is to provide a motivation for projects to join OSGeo, being in position to have their releases certified would be a good win. Even just being  able to mark projects that have done some testing is a decent win. Can you think of any others?

> 2) Recognise testing beyond that the OGC is in position to offer, for
> example Client certification is not available.
>
> This testing can probably only be offered against OSGeo projects such as
> GeoServer and MapServer, and can be used to promote that "cross project
> interoperability" we are supposed to be focusing on.

Client certification is indeed a difficult topic. You can have a WFS client that
works fine when being used with a WFS server that delivers simple features
("flat" organization of attributes), but that won't be able to understand
complex features ( e.g. Inspire schemas ). This is not just a theoretical
example ;-)

Hence the sticker indicating what the client was tested with. I am not aware of any general purpose open source clients for complex features, simply nobody has been willing to pay for them :D

Jody

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