Overview

One of the pillars of free software is the right to better the software and give it back to the community. This can always be done by a fork, but this is usually a drastic measure. Instead, we allow third-party contributors to give us their contributions for inclusion in the official project Git repository.

This decision, however, is a hard one to make for any project. We as developers need to be able to protect ourselves from the constant threat of legal action. We also need to be able to protect the freedom of the software. One way we could avoid these problems is in having all copyrights assigned to us. Every contributor must fill out forms and sign papers, which is a hassle and might drive potential contributors away. Instead, we allow you to keep your copyright and all rights associated with it in your jurisdiction, but ask that you license your contribution to us under the same licenses we use, GPL 3 or later for code or Creative Commons Unported Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license for data and resources.

How to Get Started

It is important to first familiarize yourself with the version control system Git, which is used in the Humm and Strumm Project. Create a clone of the project repository as described here.

Any new codebase is daunting at first, but we try to document it as best we can. The latest release's documentation can be found online, we maintain an external documentation site, and the source code is thoroughly commented. We're also open to any inquiries about our code. The best place to do this is at the hummstrumm-contrib mailing list.

Be sure to look at the release roadmap, to understand where the project is going in the future. You may want to also look at the issue tracker to see where you can help.

Remember that small contributions at first are better, if only because we have to review them before accepting them, and it's easier for us.

Please make your final development available on the unstable branch of your repository. We will not consider developments on the master branch or any other branch. It is fine to create another branch to organize your work, but be sure to merge that into unstable. This makes it much easier for us to deal with your contribution. Please make sure you have pulled the latest changes, too.

Submitting a Contribution

The Humm and Strumm Project accepts contributions in two ways. You can either submit the patches via email to our hummstrumm-contrib mailing list or create a Pull Request issue on our Issue Tracker.

Patch emails should be formatted by git format-patch origin. Send us an email with these patches attached. By sending them to hummstrumm-contrib, you'll start the code review process, and we'll look over your code.

Pull Requests are simply requests that we pull your commits from a publicly hosted Git repository into our project repo. This can be on Google Code, on GitHub, on Gitorious, or even on a self-hosted server with the Git repo. To request a pull, create a new pull request on our issue tracker. Fill out the form as described. We'll begin the review process soon after that.

As stated above, we do require you to license your code to us in a specific way. There is a special disclaimer we require you to submit along with your contribution:

I, (your name), hereby release this contribution under (license as described above).

We'll use your name and email address in the Thanks page on our wiki and the THANKS file in the distribution to attribute you. Though it is not a requirement, we strongly encourage you to update us when your contact email changes, so we will continue to be able to refer to you correctly.

Attribution Policy

All submissions that go into our official releases will be attributed to their owners. The THANKS file will provide attribution for your contribution. If you change any code, feel free to add yourself as an author in the documentation comments of the class, method, enumeration, structure, union, or function you modify, as appropriate.

On any files you create, please put this copyright message:

Copyright (C) (year of contribution), (your name).

Also, put this in any file you modify:

Parts of this file Copyright (C) (year of contribution), (your name).

Thank You!

We thank you for your decision to contribute to this project, which will help us make this software better!

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