Dear all
I went through Peter's attached document.
At the end of his document he lists some comments or concerns. I have copied them below with my own replies.
1. An error occurred during the submission of the questionnaire. The error message appeared just for a second and it seems that the session time expired. This was after a period of inactivity.
*This is a website error.*
2. In order to beat the short session time the we tried to enter in the information in parts by saving and modifying it. Unfortunately the “view modify” link is not working and an empty page comes up. The data cannot be modified; everything must be typed in again.
*This is a website error.*
3. If no data is entered the product gets a GOLD certification.
*This is a website error.*
4. Even with a detailed knowledge of OMII-UK software products the OMII employee carrying out the assessment found it difficult to answer some of the questions. The questions are open to various interpretations. Perhaps the answers should have been peer-reviewed (by OMII colleagues) in order to ensure correctness.
*Peer review may be a very good idea.*
6. Certified Open focuses mainly on the assessment of the “lock-in” factor.
*It's our sole focus, if I recall correctly. So that's OK.*
7. Certified Open is based on self-certifying principle, however the correctness of answers is not verified. Perhaps again peer review would enable a more objective assessment.
*I tend to agree. There is also the final authentication layer before the award of the formal certification.*
8. There are no references in the “Certified Open Product and Services Framework” document. The OMII staff member performing the assessment felt a short description of the evolution of the “Certified Open” idea would be beneficial for a better understanding of the assessment process.
*This paragraph was not entirely clear to me. However, I understand that the staff member wanted a contextualisation of the principle of Certified Open.*
9. We suggest that Certified Open should explain in more detail the motivation behind the “Certified Open” initiative by focusing on the benefits for software providers.
*Related to point 8, the staff appear to wish for an application of the principle of Certified Open to their organisation's perceived benefit from it's use. Like the previous point, this indicates that we are not yet selling the idea clearly enough. A marketing focus problem.*
10. The OMII employee carrying out the assessment suggested that Certified Open extend the questionnaire by additional categories for assessing the cost of software development and quantifying the number of potential customers.
*These are not lock-in issues. These are issues of development and deployment planning. (at least, that's my perspective)*
11. The evaluation of each component took a little longer than an hour. A significant benefit of the tool is that it encourages reflection on the aspects of the components that enable or damage openness.
*Excellent.*
12. The components that we chose were the most appropriate for this sort of evaluation, so our generally favorable assessment may be biased by that. Also, OMII has a mission to produce Open components. All our components are Open Source. This may also have biased our view.
*Perhaps we need to have methods of people stating potential bias? Full disclosure in a box preceding the primary form? This could later be used in any cases where charges of intentional distortion were levelled against a certified body.*