For compliance testing versus certification the technical steps are as follows:
1. Get the list of authorized test suites from the certification authority http://www.opengroup.org/lsb/cert/docs/testsuites.html This points to where the test suites can be downloaded from, they are freely available via ftp. Binaries are run for certification testing, the sources are available via cvs (see http://www.linuxbase.org/test/ for more details on the test suites, sources, cvs tree and FAQ) 2. You can use the Guide to Certification from http://www.opengroup.org/lsb/cert/docs/LSB_Certification_Guide.html to understand what you need to do for testing (the test campaign definition), which suites and what it means to pass, which result codes need to be resolved. Probably just look at the section on Formal testing and Test Campaign sections and you may also want to look at the runtime test FAQ on http://www.linuxbase.org/test/ (you'll see from the guide that there is more than just testing for formal certification) (as an fyi, you can view an overview of what is involved in a formal certification submission, at http://www.opengroup.org/lsb/cert/docs/certprimer/ ) You'll want to visit the LSB Application Battery and read the section on certification, since testing a runtime involves running two applications from the battery -- its also useful if you are planning to write LSB conforming applications and want to see some examples. 3. Test your product. If there are failures then they need to be resolved via a granted problem report in the Certification Problem Reporting system, a searchable database at http://www.opengroup.org/lsb/cert/PR/ The certification fees are for the administrative services of operating the program, the web certification system, processing submissions, processing the problem report database etc. Unfortunately we do have to pay our staff salaries. We developed and contributed a large part of the runtime test suites to the program. I understand that there are plans for a "compliance register" for claims of self tested compliance to be logged, to be established by the Free Standards Group, although we'd need to hear officially from them on that one. regards Andrew
