Application Community Certification

From ideas to applications

Before creating an application for NethServer 8, consider if it’s really necessary. Sometimes, a simple documentation page is sufficient and requires much less effort. When trying out new ideas, make sure to document every step and comment in a community discussion under the Feature category.

If the idea gains traction, then it’s time to think about a new application. When creating one, ensure the following requirements are met:

  • The application and its components must respect user data privacy and integrity. Although this may seem obvious, it’s crucial for everyone to be aware of any special data treatments performed by the application, especially if it relies on third-party cloud services. This allows users to evaluate whether those treatments comply with their country’s laws and personal privacy standards.

  • If your application relies on third-party work, make sure it complies with their license.

  • Create a personal repository on GitHub, for example by starting with the ns8-kickstart template. The How to page provides a brief introduction about applications (or modules) development.

  • Add a license and copyright notice in the COPYING or LICENSE file. GPL v3+ is highly recommended to ensure your work is distributed and used under that license.

  • Announce the new application on the community.nethserver.org App category.

  • If desired, submit a pull request for the NethForge repository metadata to have the application listed on the Software Center page. Be sure to include a link to the community announcement. If you prefer to setup a personal application repository, look at the Software repositories page.

Before being included in NethForge, applications must pass a review process. The review process leading to inclusion in NethForge is described in the next section.

Certification process

The Community Certification ensures that an application is functional, secure, maintained, and provides sufficient information about the developer and the software it relies on.

Submitting a pull request (PR) for the NethForge repository metadata starts the Community certification process for the application.

After approval, at any time, the application can be removed from NethForge by the NethForge repository maintainers. For example, this can happen if the current version is no longer maintained and/or has significant security issues, or if its behavior is deemed malicious.

Here follow some tips that may help to quickly complete the certification process.

1. Metadata and license

  1. The PR for NethForge must contain a directory and files as described in Create a repository.

  2. Similarly, fill the metadata.json file of the app UI with the required information. Provide details for reporting bugs, such as a link to the app’s bug tracker (you can link to https://github.com/NethServer/dev/issues), the developer’s email, and any other relevant contact information.

  3. Additionally, in the metadata.json, consider linking a document via terms_url that clarifies any data treatment or application behavior the user should be aware of. This is particularly important if the application handles sensitive data or must conform to data privacy laws. During the certification process, we will pay close attention to compliance with EU laws and regulations.

  4. Administrator documentation. This is the documentation for the administrator who must configure the applications for the final users. A public web page link must be provided in the PR description. You can decide to write the documentation on your preferred web site or to directly create a new NS8 Admin’s Manual page with a PR. In both cases the metadata.json documentation URL will point to the latter with an application summary available from there.

  5. Integrate the README.md file in the code repository with documentation for developers and the support team. A detailed description of container volumes, environment variables, and special maintenance or customization procedures is very important. If something is still missing, document it for instance under a “Roadmap”, “Limitations”, “TODO” section. Provide also a link to your Community profile to contact you.

  6. The application and its parts must have no licensing conflicts. Licenses must permit unlimited distribution of the application.

2. Platform compliancy

  1. The implementation of platform-defined behaviors, where present, must work correctly. Pay attention to:

    • Application Creation and Removal
    • Clone and Move
    • Backup and Restore
    • Change of cluster Email notification settings
    • HTTP routes management
    • TLS certificates management
    • Bind to one or more User Domains
    • Node firewall management
    • Node ports allocation

  2. Applications must avoid requiring root privileges (rootfull) and should operate with the minimum necessary authorizations. Exceptions may be requested but must be justified and approved on a case-by-case basis.

  3. The UI code respects Internationalization (i18n) and NS8 Weblate project has a component for your app Localization (l10n). The app translation license must be compatible with the Weblate Libre Hosted plan. For this purpose, if your app license is not compliant, choose a translation license from choosealicense.com.

3. Application updates

Application updates must obey the same rules of the core, described in the Development process.