Background
As many will know we have been working on FOSS friendly qualifications for
end-users for several years now through the INGOT project. The
qualifications and associated certificates are differentiated across 6
levels covering all software applications from complete beginner to
university entrance level. The assessment criteria are generic and based on
the UK National Standards referenced to the European Qualifications
Framework. Further, the assessment is backed by a comprehensive (Drupal +
LAMP) on-line system for managing submission of evidence, moderation,
progress tracking, reporting and authentication of certificates.
We have been invited by the OpenOffice.org certification project to work in
partnership with them to support a large corporate training company in
providing certification of user skills in OpenOffice.org. This is simply a
matter of contextualising the assessments with evidence drawn from OOo or
products derived from that code base. The assessment criteria are no
different from those used for any office products but the evidence has to be
provided using OOo, LibO or other OOo based applications. In this sense
changes to OOo or LibO are unlikely to have a material effect on the
certification and that is a deliberate design strategy in the UK national
frameworks. You don't want to have to potentially change things on every new
release.
The specific proposal is to use the LibO logo on end user certificates and
the LibreOffice name and logo on the handbook with full acknowledgement of
trade marks etc. There will be a payment back to the community for each
certificate issued carrying a LibO logo - I can't be precise at the moment
as we are still working out costs but it is likely to be around 50 cents to
a dollar per certificate. We are trying to keep costs down to get maximum
reach to less economically advantaged nations. High volume will make the
marketing dimension more effective but we also have to cover hosting,
quality assurance and other costs.
I don't really know where LibO certification fits into this. It might not
and if so there is no harm done, we can just carry on as before. I just
thought this might be an opportunity for something that could be a joint
OOo/LibO activity and a means of raising brand awareness for LibO. Since I
fly to Ecuador with Manfred Reiter from Frankfurt in about 1.5 weeks and the
handbook is currently being translated into Spanish by Alexandro Colorado,
it would be helpful to have an answer as soon as possible. If anyone wants a
copy of the draft handbook I can send it. We aim to make it available from
Lulu in paper form, as an e-book, as a downloadable pdf and in web pages
translated into multiple languages.