Multiple Ports, Third-Party Products, and Binary-Compatible Families

Multiple Ports of the Same Product

Some licensees may wish to register their products across a large number of different families of computer systems. Rather than imposing the high costs of multiple tests and multiple Product Registration applications, The Open Group takes a pragmatic view and includes a method for minimizing unnecessary work without reducing the quality of the Open Brand. The process builds on the existing approach to Quality Assurance (QA) taken by the licensee of the Open Brand and requires a primary port to one or more binary-compatible families to undergo stringent testing, with all of the subsequent ports undergoing QA tests. Licensees should contact the Conformance Administrator to discuss the process.

The process is as follows:

1. The Open Group must be assured as to the quality of the testing process; that is, that procedures are in place to ensure that the necessary testing is actually carried out on each port and a process is in place to determine what testing is necessary.

2. The testing process requires submission to an appropriately recognized Laboratory. A detailed test plan should be agreed in advance with The Open Group. This should include the rationale for which ports are and which are not to be fully tested. The Open Group reserves the right to charge reasonable fees for analyzing test plans.

3. The applicant may then register each product for which conformance has been demonstrated.

4. The licensee can add one or more environments to the Product Registration at any time by submitting an application and the relevant Conformance Statements, provided that testing has been in accordance with the agreed plan.

5. The Open Group has the usual rights of audit as defined in the Trademark License Agreement.

6. The Conformance Statement must contain the detail of the actual test environments and their relationship to the product implementation on other platforms.

7. The Conformance Statement must also detail which configurations were tested using the full conformance suite and which have been subject to QA testing.

The Open Group may request the licensee to supply information reasonably related to the conformance of the product to the Product Standard.

Third-Party Products

Licensees of the Open Brand are not obliged to directly sell the products that they register. They are required to ensure that the Registered Products are available in the marketplace. Licensees can therefore register products that they market by reference to or by incorporation of third-party products.

This process does not in any way diminish the obligations imposed upon the licensee by the Trademark License Agreement; the obligations are the same as if the complete Registered Product were sold directly by the licensee. The licensee is therefore advised to have appropriate agreements with each third-party supplier.

Binary-Compatible Family

The Open Brand applies to software products that conform to the Product Standard in a defined hardware, or combined hardware-system software environment (that is, the underlying hardware and any system software necessary to allow the product to function). The relationships are shown in the following figure:

The supporting environment may be available in a variety of different realizations.

Where a series of environments are binary-compatible, the product may be registered in all of the series on the basis of a single test report and one Product Registration application. Additional members of a binary-compatible series may be added subsequently.

Identification of the binary-compatible family must be made in the Conformance Statement.

No strict rules are given by The Open Group on what constitutes binary-compatibility, as it is architecture-specific, but note that the audit program may request the conformance of a Registered Product to be demonstrated on any appropriately configured member of a claimed binary-compatible family.