Behind the scenes at TDF: Certification

Towards the end of the year, The Document Foundation would like to share achievements in 2014 with our community and our generous donours, to whom we’d like to express our sincerest gratitude and thanks for their incredible and wonderful support and their invaluable contributions!

Italo Vignoli, who is in charge of the LibreOffice Certification Program, summarizes the efforts undergone so far, the status quo and the plans for 2015:

Certification Project, looking forward to the first peer-to-peer reviews

TDF has announced the Certification Program in early November, with applications open only to TDF Members until April 2015, for Migrations and Trainings. The first peer-to-peer review session will be at FOSDEM in Brussels, on January 31 and February 2, 2015.

Although the website and all documents are in English, peer-to-peer reviews will be managed – as far as possible – in the native language of the candidate.

For people not able to reach Brussels, we will organize peer-to-peer reviews via videoconferencing.

The deadline for applications, to reach the first review session, is January 16, 2015, to allow two full weeks before the actual peer-to-peer review. In fact, we have to look at applications, approve or reject them (or keep them on hold when they are from non TDF Members), and provide a feedback.

We have a dozen applications so far, from TDF Members, from non TDF Members, and from developers.

We will complete the review of the first applications and provide a feedback by December 23, 2014. The process is still in the early stage, so we are getting up to speed and sharing all the decisions with the group to reach a consensus.

In general, we will accept or reject applications from TDF Members, we will postpone to March/April 2015 applications from non TDF Members, and we will forward applications from developers to the ESC.

In fact, Developers Certification is managed by the ESC, and is by invitation (as reiterated on the website, and on Certification Q&A). So, developers should not apply via the website.

Applying for LibreOffice Certification is not difficult, but to make it even easier we have created an infographics to explain it in detail. Following the seven steps, it will be easier to provide all necessary informations.
For any additional information, please write to certification@libreoffice.org.