Rules
From SymPy
This is an emerging draft of a list of rules about how to give credits properly. This is a list of ideas, we didn't approve it yet.
Contributors: a list of contributors together with what they did. Just use this.
See also the issue 513.
Let's also get inspired by: http://sagemath.org/ack.html
Contents |
Motivation
We want SymPy development to be as open as possible and we want all people that contributed to it to feel that SymPy is theirs. I.e. by downloading sympy, fixing some usability bugs, one should feel, that he is contributing to his product (not just fixing somebody's else problems).
Also it's very important, that people, who have contributed, get credits for it.
This set of rules of our social interaction can be changed, democratically, if we agree on something else (better). We are not specifying in detail what we mean exactly by "agree", as so far there wasn't a problem with that (we discuss on the mailinglist, issue, IRC). If such a problem arises in the future, we'll have to make the rules more formal.
Rules
This idea is from the issue 513 comment 28, but it has problems:
- goal
- the purpose of SymPy is to provide a CAS for Python
- author
- an author of a CAS is the one who implements a new mathematical concept or improves the existing one in a substantial way
- contributor
- everyone, who contributes at least one patch, that is accepted.
Who is a contributor and who is not can be easily determined and a full list of contributors is given at the beginning of the README.
It's more difficult to determine, who is an author. Rough list is the last section of the README.
I think developer is equal to contributor? How are we going to select a list of authors from Contributors? --Ondrej 06:30, 17 January 2008 (CST)
As discussed on the sage-devel, these things cannot really be determined without a judgement. So let's just take care of the Contributors page.
Pearu says: Developer is a bit more than a contributor, developer adds new functionality in a systematic way. Authors can be selected using exactly the condition above, unsure cases can be discussed. You seem to mix two different sets of authors together. Authors of a software are those discussed above and when other people are referring to sympy, they should list those authors. Authors of a paper that discuss about the software are those who actually contributed something to the paper (eg text, produced test results/graphs, code examples, etc).
how to become a member of the google code project
Anyone, who contributes at least some code, can be made a member, while of course we will be watching what he does and if he does something stupid, we'll tell him to consult things with us first (everyone should consult things with others anyway), and only then, if it doesn't help, we'll kindly disable the account. That way it's fair and open to everyone to show what's in him.
what code goes in and which doesn't
The development is open for everyone, all decisions are made on the mailinglist or issues by reaching a consensus. All developers have opinions, sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. All decisions (both technical and social) should be made democratically. New code is first submitted into sympy-patches, where any developer has right to discuss it. Only when noone is against, the code can be committed. Sometimes it's necessary to commit some code quite fast (for example to move forward, or to fix some serious bug), so the code should still be submitted to sympy-patches and then committed directly - but if someones objects to it later, the next time more time should be allowed for it's discussion.
