Certification for GNOME apps

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com>]

Hi,

One of the marketing efforts that the Foundation Board discussed during
GUADEC is the possibility of having  "certification levels" for GNOME
applications.  Apps that get rated higher are "nicer" or "more
GNOME-like"; hopefully we can use the rating metrics to let users gauge
how well a particular app integrates with the rest of their GNOME
desktop.

Remember that this is a MARKETING thing.  ISVs are starting to develop
GNOME-ish apps (c.f. Adobe Acrobat Reader).  We need several things:

- A sort-of checklist to let ISVs know what they should do in their apps
to integrate well with the desktop --- to make their apps more
GNOME-like.

- A way for GNOME to say, "app Foo integrates better with GNOME than app
Bar".

- A way for users to know which app is more GNOME-like; hopefully this
will give them a way to pick the better product.

You know those printers or modems that have a penguin sticker that says
"works with Linux"?  Don't they give you a warm and fuzzy feeling?
GNOME certification is the same thing:  it means that someone tested
your app to see that it works well with GNOME.

I don't have names for the certification levels yet.  They are something
like this:

Level 0 - the app runs without doing idiotic things like taking over
your desktop.  It appears in the panel menus, and it installs its MIME
handlers.  Pretty much any X app can be made to conform to this.

Level 1 - the app uses the standard GNOME dialogs (file, printing).
Drag-and-drop works.  See OpenOffice.org a good examples.

Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+.

Level N - etc.

The idea is that lower levels are easier to implement, and higher levels
denote that you actually put in a good effort to make your app
GNOME-like.

This will benefit ISV apps and core GNOME apps.  In the case of core
apps, the certification checklist can be a way to keep ourselves honest:
we can say that an app cannot ship as part of the GNOME platform unless
it attains level N of certification (e.g. drag-and-drop would work, it
would have online help, etc.).  Having the checklist also allows one to
plan a project better, because you can start making technical decisions
from the start.

The certification effort is here:

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeCertification

Your ideas are most welcome.

  Federico