Any and everyone is very welcome to contribute to Anti-XML! This is part of the reason we're using GitHub to host the source. If you see something that you feel needs to be done, or you just want to get your hands dirty with a really neat Scala project, go ahead and create your own fork, commit and push. Once your happy with your changes, submit a pull request! Just as a curtesy, please try to keep your changes organized (preferably in a feature branch) to make it easier for me to review and merge them. While I can handle pull requests for dozens of unrelated commits all mixed together in the same branch, I really prefer not to. So, just keep to common Git best-practices and you should be fine!
Note that these are hints and suggestions, not necessarily rules! In other words, I won't reject your pull request simply for having a colon out of place.
- Observe "Good" Scala Style – This is an intensely subjective thing, so I'm not going to say too much about it. I try to follow the Scala Style Guide, and I suggest you do the same, but I won't go crazy if you don't.
- Aim for Purely-Functional – Make every attempt to write your code in a purely-functional style. Code written in this style is much easier to review (because its effect is self-contained) and vastly easier to maintain in the long run. There are certainly times when the imperative style is appropriate (e.g. for performance reasons), but those times are far less frequent than you might think. Default to purely-functional, and only convert to imperative if you absolutely must. Note that even if your implementations are imperative, the exposed API must be purely-functional. All side-effects must be resolved within the scope of whatever function you're writing.
- Do Something Cool – I think this should go without saying.
Alright, here comes a mountain of boring; it's important though, so please read! As you should have already seen, Anti-XML is licensed under the BSD License. This is very important to understand: if you contribute code to Anti-XML, you are agreeing to assign a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to the Anti-XML project, collectively represented by Daniel Spiewak. In plain-English, this means that if you contribute, you're letting Anti-XML incorporate, control and extend the contributions you submit. There is a more precise, legal definition of this assignment below (drawn from the Common Public License).
All of this is pretty standard for an open-source project. Basically, there is an understanding that if you contribute, you're giving away that source code under the terms of the project license. The only reason I have to spell it out here is to prevent law suits (and also to ensure that the code provenance is clear for any corporation which wishes to make use of the library). There is nothing required or implied here that is particularly out of the ordinary.
The important point here is that you implicitly agree to these terms when you submit a pull request to the project. In other words, if you ask me to include your contributions into the main Git repository, you are assumed to have agreed to these terms. This is analogous to the "shrink wrap" agreement used by certain hardware OEMs. If I could make GitHub show this agreement when you submit the pull request, I would.
If, for whatever reason, you decide after the fact that you don't agree to these terms on your contribution, let me know within 30 days of the pull request and I'll remove your code from the repository, no questions asked. If you discover the mistake after the 30 day window, I'll still try to accomodate you, but I can't make any guarantees given the fact that additional code may have been layered on top of your code by that point.
If you have any questions about this implicit contributor agreement, please do not hesitate to email me. I'm not a lawyer, but I'll try to answer your questions as best I can. My hope is that this scheme represents the most painless way to accomplish all this legal mumbo-jumbo, allowing everyone to focus on more interesting things, like the actual code.
(shamelessly stolen from the text of the Common Public License)
"Contribution" means:
- in the case of the initial Contributor, the initial code and documentation distributed under this Agreement, and
- in the case of each subsequent Contributor:
- changes to the Program, and
- additions to the Program;
where such changes and/or additions to the Program originate from and are distributed by that particular Contributor. A Contribution 'originates' from a Contributor if it was added to the Program by such Contributor itself or anyone acting on such Contributor's behalf. Contributions do not include additions to the Program which: (i) are separate modules of software distributed in conjunction with the Program under their own license agreement, and (ii) are not derivative works of the Program.
"Contributor" means any person or entity that distributes the Program.
"Licensed Patents " mean patent claims licensable by a Contributor which are necessarily infringed by the use or sale of its Contribution alone or when combined with the Program.
"Program" means the Contributions distributed in accordance with this Agreement.
"Recipient" means anyone who receives the Program under this Agreement, including all Contributors.
- Subject to the terms of this Agreement, each Contributor hereby grants Recipient a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute and sublicense the Contribution of such Contributor, if any, and such derivative works, in source code and object code form.
- Subject to the terms of this Agreement, each Contributor hereby grants Recipient a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under Licensed Patents to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import and otherwise transfer the Contribution of such Contributor, if any, in source code and object code form. This patent license shall apply to the combination of the Contribution and the Program if, at the time the Contribution is added by the Contributor, such addition of the Contribution causes such combination to be covered by the Licensed Patents. The patent license shall not apply to any other combinations which include the Contribution. No hardware per se is licensed hereunder.
- Recipient understands that although each Contributor grants the licenses to its Contributions set forth herein, no assurances are provided by any Contributor that the Program does not infringe the patent or other intellectual property rights of any other entity. Each Contributor disclaims any liability to Recipient for claims brought by any other entity based on infringement of intellectual property rights or otherwise. As a condition to exercising the rights and licenses granted hereunder, each Recipient hereby assumes sole responsibility to secure any other intellectual property rights needed, if any. For example, if a third party patent license is required to allow Recipient to distribute the Program, it is Recipient's responsibility to acquire that license before distributing the Program.
- Each Contributor represents that to its knowledge it has sufficient copyright rights in its Contribution, if any, to grant the copyright license set forth in this Agreement.