Malcolm, formerly with BP Upstream, represented BP in CO-LaN for many years, acting as President from November 2010 till December 2015. He received the CAPE-OPEN 2015 Award. Malcolm has been contracted by CO-LaN to prepare for the launch of the certification process.
First Malcolm explained what are the various actors within the certification process and especially the newly created role of Chief Certification Officer, how it interacts with other bodies within CO-LaN like CO-LaN Management Board, the Interoperability Special Interest Group (SIG) and other SIGs. Contrary to previous plans, a Certification SIG is not being set up, leaving it to the Management Board and the Chief Certification Officer the task of dealing with challenges made to decisions on certification.
Next Malcolm described the funding scheme for the certification process.
To be reviewed in 2025, it makes certification free for all CO-LaN members. This arrangement should be possible by relying on self-testing without any need for CO-LaN to conduct interoperability testing on behalf of the CO-LaN members. Since it is impossible yet to figure out the time, and therefore manpower, needed to operate the certification process, the cost to CO-LaN will be monitored closely in the years to come. Provision of certification as a service to non-members will be considered in the future, with the charge based on man-hours required to complete the work for each certification.
The question of making the Test Suite open source was then tackled. At this time, the position taken is to distribute only binaries to CO-LaN members.