Software certification: myths and reality

Certification is treacherous stuff. People tend to have contradictory attitudes. Some want to have a full guaranty that a given product or service is reliable, others consider the term and all that it concerns as deceptive and used only for marketing purposes. And when it comes to software, professionals may be found near to hysteria, insisting that the concept should be excluded from the technological, if not the commercial, realm. Despite all this, practitioners, scientists, and even users, can coexist happily with software certification, if only they take a positive view of the concepts, actions and entities involved. The problem is that many people talk and assert their opinions on certification without really knowing what it's all about. Our aim here is to define the area of interest and show that nothing dramatic happens when software is involved.