Concepts and practice of software certification

Certification is one of those concepts many speak about and few know of all the messy situations in which it is invoked. The meaning that has been given to this word is varying over a broad span and depends on culture, interest and experience. Nice and bad things have been said and written about certification, and sometimes with good reasons for either kind of judgment. And, when it comes to software processes and products, things go really confusing and discomforting. Excepting when it is associated to quality management systems (typically the case of ISO 9000 certification) the word, with all its derivatives, has even been banished from commercial advertisements and technical literature for years, the main reason being a big concern that its use would be tied with such monsters as 'guarantee' and 'liability'. Yet many of such things as certification, certificate, certification scheme for products and processes are coming back, even in the software domain, and there is business growing around them. This paper aims, if not at clarifying all doubts, at least at identifying the main issues related to the use of software certification, in the hope the readers will look at it in somewhat more friendly fashion. We will not discuss certification of quality management systems, only mention some of its relationship with other aspects