# DRAFT STATUS Proposed Software Libre Development Best Practices

This is a document which outlines best practices for establishing and
maintaining a healthy and thriving Software Libre Project.  Mostly it
describes a set of criteria for the hosting and communication infrastructure
which are most likely to result in good communication, teamwork and
mutual respect between developers themselves and also developers and
users.  However also included are a series of guidelines for personal
interactions.

The initial version is based on the GNU Project's Software Development
Services that they offer to GNU Projects, but generalised.

<https://www.gnu.org/software/devel.en.html>

Also the Maintainer's Guide :
<https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.txt>

This contains important details such as a record of contributors
and their contributions (typically covered by a signed-off git
commit but better is "significant contributors" at the top of
the file).  Reason: many distros simply will not package software
that has legally dubious origin.  A verifiable chain of copyright
declarations is *important*.

Also under consideration is the recommendation to take a
"Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers": 

<http://bryce.vc/post/22780107231/a-hippocratic-oath-for-software-engineers>

The primary draft which seems to well follow the original Medical Oath
is here:

<http://farmerandfarmer.org/medicine/ethics.html>

Also under consideration is for a project to have a Charter (such
as the Apache Software Foundation Charter) 


Also some Coding Standards, e.g.

<https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.txt>

Draft to generalize the GNU Project's Software Development
Services offered to GNU Projects (<https://www.gnu.org/software/devel.en.html>):

* we recommend the use of a Libre Hosting Service which has a minimum criteria
 of an A, as defined by the [FSF's Hosting Criteria](https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria.en.html)
* we recommend the use of software libre hosted mailing lists
* we recommend to host the webpages for the project using resources that meet the FSF's Hosting Criteria
* we recommend to release your project under a free software license (see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html>)
* we recommend to release build and test procedures *if used and/or needed* under a free software license (see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html>)
* tbc

# Table of well-known software libre projects

Please ensure that things are filled in only from "official" channels
as indicated from the web site (if there is one).  For example samba
has an official page <https://www.samba.org/samba/irc.html> which
outlines their IRC channels.  If however there is something that
is really very well-known but is "unofficial" please do include it
but mark it as such.  The linux kernel for example has well-known
places that it is developed, and the Distros in particular will have
extremely well-known but "unofficial" support channels that will be
relevant.

# Interoperability Projects

| Project Name (linking website)        | Samba   | Wine |   |   |
|---------------------------------------|---------|------|---|---|
| Foundation                            | No      |      |   |   |
| "Ownership" Transfer Contributions    | No      |      |   |   |
| Charter                               | None    |      |   |   |
| Communication Guidelines Media        | <font size=1>Mailing List - Commit</font> |   |   |   |
| Mailing Lists per Language*           | <font size=1>6 English - 1 French - 1 Italian</font> |   |   |
| Editable Wikipages                    | Yes     |      |   |   |
| IRC/Chatroom                          | Yes     |      |   |   |
| Forums                                | No      |      |   |   |
| Translation Aides                     | None    |      |   |   |
| Fork-able Web Data                    | Unclear |      |   |   |
| Only Libre Dependencies               | Yes     |      |   |   |
| "Copyleft"                            | Yes     |      |   |   |
| Only "Copyleft" Dependencies          | No      |      |   |   |
| Fork-able Documentation Platforms     | Yes     |      |   |   |
| "Copyleft" Documentation Platforms    |         |      |   |   |

*Not counting other courteously hosted projects, only if they have their own project website. 


| Communication Guidelines per Media    | Medium - Words - Anchors - Sections | 2nd Medium - Words - Anchors - Sections |
| ------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | --------------------------------------- |
| Project                               | ----------------------------------- | --------------------------------------- |
| Samba                                 | Email  - 407   - 0       - 10       | Commit     - 111   - 0       - 6        |
| Wine                                  |                                     |



<font size=1>

| Citations | [Samba](https://www.samba.org) |
<ul>
<li> | "Ownership" Transfer Contributions | <a href=https://www.samba.org/samba/devel/copyright-policy.html>Samba</a>
<li> | Mailing Lists | <a href=https://lists.samba.org/>Samba En and It</a> <a href=https://groupes.renater.fr/sympa/arc/samba-fr>Samba Fr</a>
<li> | Dependencies | <a href=https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Package_Dependencies_Required_to_Build_Samba#Mandatory>Samba</a>
<li> | Licenses | <a href=https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/GPL.html>Samba</a>
</ul>
</font>

# Audio-Visual Projects

| Project Name (linking website)                  | Apertus        |  |   |   |   |
|-------------------------------------------------|---|---|---|---|
| Chatroom                                        |  IRC - freenode - #apertus |  |   |   |   |
| Mailing Lists                                   |   Google "Group" - [considering savannah](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/axiom-community/yNli6E4SkV8/CQa3VVeuBAAJ) | |   |   |   |
| Forums                                          |    no ||   |   |   |
| Foundation                                      |   Austrian-registered "Association" |   |   |   |
| Charter                                         |    [Bylaws](https://www.apertus.org/association-bylaws) ||   |   |   |
| Code of Conduct                            |   none | |   |   |   |
| Copyright Assignment Required                   |   no | |   |   |   |
| Libre License                                   |   GPLv3 | |   |   |   |
| Libre Server Code                               |   no, but ok w/o scripts | |   |   |   |
| VCS / Libre Hosted? |   github - not libre | |   |   |   |
| Bug Tracker / Libre Hosted? | phabricator - yes |  |   |   |   |

# 2D and 3D editing Projects (Image, PCB, CAD)

| Project Name (linking website)                  |  Inkscape | GIMP  | Blender  | KiCAD  |
|-------------------------------------------------|---|---|---|---|
| Chatroom                                        |   |   |   |   |
| Mailing Lists                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Forums                                          |   |   |   |   |
| Foundation                                      |   |   |   |   |
| Charter                                         |   |   |   |   |
| Code of Conduct                                 |   |   |   |   |
| Copyright Assignment Required                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre License                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Server Code                               |   |   |   |   |
| VCS - Libre hosted?                             |   |   |   |   |
| Bug Tracker - Libre Hosted?                     |   |   |   |   |


# Web Browser Projects

| Project Name (linking website)                  |  Firefox | Webkit  | Blink (Chromium)  | Netsurf  |
|-------------------------------------------------|---|---|---|---|
| Chatroom                                        |   |   |   |   |
| Mailing Lists                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Forums                                          |   |   |   |   |
| Foundation                                      |   |   |   |   |
| Charter                                         |   |   |   |   |
| Code of Conduct                                 |   |   |   |   |
| Copyright Assignment Required                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre License                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Server Code                               |   |   |   |   |
| VCS - Libre hosted?                             |   |   |   |   |
| Bug Tracker - Libre Hosted?                     |   |   |   |   |

# Distros

| Project Name (linking website)                  | Arch  | Debian  | Ubuntu  | Slackware  | Gentoo | FreeBSD |
|-------------------------------------------------|---|---|---|---|
| Chatroom                                        |   |   |   |   |
| Mailing Lists                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Forums                                          |   |   |   |   |
| Foundation                                      |   |   |   |   |
| Charter                                         |   |   |   |   |
| Code of Conduct                                 |   |   |   |   |
| Copyright Assignment Required                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre License                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Server Code                               |   |   |   |   |
| VCS - Libre hosted?                             |   |   |   |   |
| Bug Tracker - Libre Hosted?                     |   |   |   |   |

# Desktop Environments

| Project Name (linking website)                  | Gnome 3  | Gnome 2  | KDE  | TDE  | EWM | fvwm2 |
|-------------------------------------------------|---|---|---|---|
| Chatroom                                        |   |   |   |   |
| Mailing Lists                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Forums                                          |   |   |   |   |
| Foundation                                      |   |   |   |   |
| Charter                                         |   |   |   |   |
| Code of Conduct                                 |   |   |   |   |
| Copyright Assignment Required                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre License                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Server Code                               |   |   |   |   |
| VCS - Libre hosted?                             |   |   |   |   |
| Bug Tracker - Libre Hosted?                     |   |   |   |   |

# Kernels

| Project Name (linking website)                  |  Linux | FreeBSD  |   |   |
|-------------------------------------------------|---|---|---|---|
| Chatroom                                        |   |   |   |   |
| Mailing Lists                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Forums                                          |   |   |   |   |
| Foundation                                      |   |   |   |   |
| Charter                                         |   |   |   |   |
| Code of Conduct                                 |   |   |   |   |
| Copyright Assignment Required                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre License                                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Server Code                               |   |   |   |   |
| VCS - Libre hosted?                             |   |   |   |   |
| Bug Tracker - Libre Hosted?                     |   |   |   |   |

# TBD

| Urbit        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| Cygwin        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| GNU gcc    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| ReactOS    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| Python        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| Perl        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| Exim4        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| sendmail    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| postfix        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

| systemd        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| openrc        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| mysqldb        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| mariadb        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| openoffice    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| libreoffice    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| X11        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| xorg        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| Kerberos    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| Heimdal        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| OpenLDAP    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
| Misc.        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

# Template

| Project Name (linking website)                  |   |   |   |   |
|-------------------------------------------------|---|---|---|---|
| Established Date                                |   |   |   |   |
| Chatroom                                        |   |   |   |   |
| Mailing Lists / ML etiquette                    |   |   |   |   |
| Forums                                          |   |   |   |   |
| Foundation                                      |   |   |   |   |
| Charter                                         |   |   |   |   |
| Code of Conduct                                 |   |   |   |   |
| Copyright Assignment Required                   |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Licensed source                           |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Licensed web site source                  |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Licensed documentation source             |   |   |   |   |
| Libre Web Browser compliant (librejs or no js)  |   |   |   |   |
| VCS - Libre hosted?                             |   |   |   |   |
| Bug Tracker - Libre Hosted?                     |   |   |   |   |