CGL 4.0 registration

[joe.macdonald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Joe MacDonald)]

Hey Troy,

Thanks for getting the ball rolling.

On Thu, 2007-03-05 at 08:50 -0600, Troy Heber wrote:

> If we were to assume that the merger never occurred and we were going
> to continue with our existing plans with OSDL the following still
> needs to happen:
> 
> CGL 4.0 was to have have a completely new registration process. First
> OSDL ask us to rename the process from registration to "Conformance
> Disclosure".

For anyone who wasn't a part of that discussion, I'll provide an attempt
at a summary.  It came down to what the term 'registration' implied when
compared to 'conformance' in reference to what OSDL was willing to
support and what they wanted the CGL working group to be.  The
discussion tended to favour 'conformance' since it didn't imply that the
CGL Review Board was doing any rigorous testing of the distribution
under consideration.

There were plenty of good reasons why we were consciously avoiding doing
any sort of rigorous testing for compliance with the standard, but the
most compelling one seemed to be potential liability if a distribution
failed some tests.

> Regardless of the name used, the idea was to have a review board that
> consisted of techboard members and the CGL initiative manager. We were
> developing a standard registration template that would be used by the
> applying distributions to disclose how they complied with the
> requirements. After completion the applicant would send the form to
> the review boards mailing list. The review board would review the
> submission, work with the applicant to address any issues with the
> submission, and then finalize the registration.

Personally, speaking as someone who could conceivably been involved on
both sides of that equation, I strongly favour this approach.
Lightweight enough to be responsive to distribution vendors who want to
register but detailed enough to be useful in evaluating a product.

> 	1. The 4.0 PoC database needs to be updated (we have the
> 	updates but have never had adequate access to do the work).

Agreed.  I believe all of the SEC PoCs are completed now, but I know I
was one of the few people who successfully had access to the OSDL
database.  There seemed to be significant access issues.

Of course there's also the questions about the utility of the database
itself.  Moving to something that supports an SQL interface was one of
our big want-items.

> 	2. Finish documenting policies and procedures for the
> 	review board

Agreed.  And I'll take the opportunity to re-state my offer to help out
again.  This is something I *really* want to see happen.

> 	3. Finish the registration template

Yep, though I think that would be a natural outgrowth of #2.

> 	4. We need a web presence to host the registration
> 	infrastructure, i.e. documentation, listings, etc.

I think this would be critical and probably needs to be considered while
performing #2 and #3 above.

> 	5. We need a mailing alias setup for the registration team.
> 
> 	6. The 4.0 PoC database needs to be made public
> 
> 	7. Public announcement that registration is open

Agreed again.  And I think the strict ordering you've proposed is also
the right one.

> I just don't think we're in any position to move forward on this until
> we have a better understanding of how CGL will fit in with the LF
> framework.

I hope that this discussion will also help the LF reps get a better idea
of where we were and what we needed (or were telling OSDL needed
improvement) so they can answer the questions we need answered.  What
resources are going to be made available to CGL for promoting the
standards, evolving the standards as the industry evolves and supporting
the companies and individuals who are invested in the Carrier Grade
Linux "brand"?  And further to that, how does the LF see CGL in
reference to LSB, specifically on items where they are in disagreement
(what is right for a carrier environment could easily be the opposite of
what is right for a desktop environment, for example).

-- 
Joe MacDonald, Member of Technical Staff, Linux Products Group, Wind
River 
direct 613.270.5750  mobile 613.291.7421  fax 613.592.2283