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You are viewing a project that is currently in draft state for the Standards Working Group in the Green Software Foundation. This project should not be considered finished or officially supported in any way by the Green Software Foundation or its members.

Open Questions

In short: these are questions the SSWG has not yet settled. No other page on this site answers them. Where a page touches one, it explains the debate and links back here.

This is a living tracker, not a snapshot. It should shrink over time as the SSWG decides each item.

#QuestionStatusOwner
1Implementation tiers: guidance only (the proposal, as for SWI), or kept as an optional disclosure label in Clause 8?OpenSSWG
2Numeric thresholds: should the 5 % M_network materiality threshold (Clause 7.5) and the 1 % third-party cut-off (Clause 7.6) stay normative values, or should the specification require a disclosed threshold with recommended values given here?OpenSSWG
3Optional O_network and two-score reporting: confirm that the score without O_network is always reported and the score with it optional (Clause 7.1), noting that the parent ISO/IEC 21031:2024 names networking among significant contributors to software emissions.OpenSSWG
4Bundled CDN energy when O_network is not reported: a transmission-basis share of a bundled CDN figure leaves the reported score if O_network is omitted, which is the energy displacement Clause 10 says cannot reduce the score. Should the specification require that share to be kept in O_server, or reported in the limitations, or something else?OpenSSWG
5Network-intensive presumption for M_network: the original draft presumed M_network material for streaming, real-time collaboration and large file transfer, and made annual review of an unpopulated declaration mandatory for them. Clause 7.5 already requires at-least-annual review of every unpopulated declaration, but carries no presumption. Should the presumption be restored?OpenSSWG
6Discouraged functional units: page views, API calls, data transferred and server requests were "discouraged" in the original draft, while the parent SCI lists API calls as a valid example and Clause 6.1 allows technical units with disclosed justification. How strongly should the guidelines discourage them?OpenSSWG
7Source for default device embodied values: the 400 / 300 / 100 / 80 kg CO2eq defaults carry no source. Confirm a published source, replace the values, or remove the table.OpenSSWG
8Location of worked examples: in the guidelines (as SWI does, and as proposed) or in the specification (as SCI for AI does)?OpenSSWG

Why these live here, and not in the specification​

The specification does not take a position on these questions beyond its current text, and these guidelines do not either. Presenting an open question as settled, even implicitly, would misrepresent where the SSWG stands. Each linked page explains the question in context and flags it as open where a reader would otherwise expect a definitive answer.

Some questions also affect the specification text itself (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8). Those are decided through the SSWG's specification process; this page records them so that implementers can see what may change.

Updating this page​

When the SSWG resolves a question, update its Status here and update the linked page(s) to reflect the decided position. Do not remove a resolved row silently: record the resolution and its date, so the history of how the method settled stays visible.

Please submit any comments you have here.