blueCAT

blueCAT is part of the Quality Assurance program of blueMarine. CAT means "Community Acceptance Testing" and is a procedure by means of which a number of beta testers evaluate the quality of the current builds of blueMarine providing a decisive feedback about the qualification of a new release. blueCAT is a mean to involve the community in driving the evolution of blueMarine, as well as to have frequent and efficient releases of the application.

Please find below a number of common questions about the blueCAT program. See also:



 

What are responsibilities of blueCAT members?

Being blueCAT an open program, of course there are no formal obligations for members; but they should feel morally oriented to contribute as best as they can. This means to spend some time whenever a new version is made available (if a good number of blueCAT members is achieved, not everybody should be involved at each release). blueCAT members should feel committed to the community, which they represent. Members should be patient people, willing to try a software that, by definition, must be tested because it's potentially buggy.

Which kind of activities blueCAT members are expected to perform?

After March 2009 blueMarine will be released with a specific plug in named "Acceptance Tests" (AT). It is a sort of "playback" facility able to automatically drive blueMarine in performing the typical user operations. ATs work on public data sets provided by the blueMarine web site, so there are no privacy concerns in providing the test results. In most cases people are only required to launch the application and wait for the tests to complete. In case some tests fail, more operations will be required in order to provide to developers further information about the failure (typically this means to email some log files). As blueMarine development proceeds, it is expected that this process gets more and more automated.
Beyond ATs, blueCAT members will be welcome in performing further manual testing at their will.

What are the benefits of blueCAT members?

We wish we were able to provide some form of symbolic compensation for blueCAT members, such as mugs or t-shirts, but at the moment this is not possible because blueMarine has got no sponsors. Maybe things could change in future. Of course the major benefit for members, as well as for the rest of the community, will be the availability of an increasingly better free application for managing photos.

What are the minimum requirements for becoming a blueCAT member?

blueCAT members must own, or have the availability, of a computing platform compatible with blueMarine requisites. This means a desktop or laptop appliance running Linux (any distribution), Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X 10.5 or later (only Intel 64bits platforms) with at least 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 2GB of free disk space (exceptions might be notebooks such as the upper level EEE PCs).

Which is the communication infrastructure for blueCAT members?

A specific blueCAT forum is available at http://bluemarine.tidalwave.it/forum/forums/show/9.page - it is used to coordinate the work among participants. It's a public forum readable by anybody (but only members of blueCAT are allowed to post). Questions, discussions and proposals about the blueCAT program must be directed to http://bluemarine.tidalwave.it/forum/forums/show/10.page (which is a normal, public forum with no posting restrictions). Private questions can be directed to bluemarine AT tidalwave DOT it, but we strongly encourage public discussions.

Which is the minimum period of time a blueCAT member must stay before stepping back?

Again, there's nothing formal here: people may join and leave when they wish. Of course the longer periods of time, the better. Let's say we expect people stay in the program at least for two major releases of blueMarine.

How do I join the blueCAT program?

First, please go to http://bluemarine.tidalwave.it/forum and register yourself. Then send an email to bluemarine AT tidalwave DOT it and present yourself, including the platform(s) you are willing to support (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X...).