Software Criteria

I. Minimum Criteria

Software Package should:

1) Be Open software under the OSI definition.
2) Be of high quality. It must have a solid, professional feel and contain few bugs.
3) Contain no Adware or Shareware Notices.
4) Be mainstream and functional. It should compare favorably with proprietary alternatives.
5) Contain good documentation and help features.
6) Contain a good installer and uninstaller.
7) Be windows native; ie. no Cygwin or Xserver should be required.

II. Tiebreak Criteria

All else being equal, the software with these traits is selected over other alternatives.

1) Better quality than other OSS alternatives.
2) Available on multiple platforms.
3) Interoperability. How well does the application exchange information with other software?
4) The software is still under active development.
5) The package already has an established position on the OpenCD from previous releases.

III. Exceptional Circumstances

1) If the application does not quite meet pt. I.4, it may still be included if it has a high 'kill-factor'. This can include 'must-have' applications, such as email, or where the proprietary alternatives are clearly better, but are very expensive. This also applies to Flash and Java plugins.

2) If an application does not meet points I.5, I.6, or I.7, we in the OpenCD project should consider assisting the development teams to resolve these issues, if the software is otherwise found to be useful and important.

3) An app might earn a place despite there being an established app in place IF it has significant improvements over the first one. In this case both should be supported for some time.