# The GenomeTools Development Contract

The GenomeTools Development Contract (GtDC) is a fork of the C4 of the ZeroMQ project, with some sections removed and adjusted licensing terms.
This is revision 0 of the GtDC (2013-07-04).

## Language

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

## Goals

GtDC is meant to provide a reusable optimal collaboration model for open source software projects. It has these specific goals:

- To maximize the scale of the community around a project, by reducing the friction for new Contributors and creating a scaled participation model with strong positive feedbacks;

- To relieve dependencies on key individuals by separating different skill sets so that there is a larger pool of competence in any required domain;

- To allow the project to develop faster and more accurately, by increasing the diversity of the decision making process;

- To support the natural life cycle of project versions from experimental through to stable, by allowing safe experimentation, rapid failure, and isolation of stable code;

- To reduce the internal complexity of project repositories, thus making it easier for Contributors to participate and reducing the scope for error;

- To enforce collective ownership of the project, which increases economic incentive to Contributors and reduces the risk of hijack by hostile entities.

## Design

### Preliminaries

- The project SHALL use the git distributed revision control system.

- The project SHALL be hosted on github.com or equivalent, herein called the "Platform".

- The project SHALL use the Platform issue tracker.

- The project SHOULD have clearly documented guidelines for code style.

- A "Contributor" is a person who wishes to provide a patch, being a set of commits that solve some clearly identified problem.

- A "Maintainer" is a person who merge patches to the project. Maintainers are not developers; their job is to enforce process.

- Contributors SHALL NOT have commit access to the repository unless they are also Maintainers.

- Maintainers SHALL have commit access to the repository.

- Everyone, without distinction or discrimination, SHALL have an equal right to become a Contributor under the terms of this contract.

### Licensing and Ownership

- The project SHALL use the ISC license.

- All contributions to the project source code ("patches") SHALL use the same license as the project.

- All patches are owned by their authors. There SHALL NOT be any copyright assignment process.

- The copyrights in the project SHALL be owned collectively by all its Contributors.

- Each Contributor SHALL be responsible for identifying themselves in the project Contributor list.

### Patch Requirements

- Maintainers and Contributors MUST have a Platform account and SHOULD use their real names or a well-known alias.

- A patch SHOULD be a minimal and accurate answer to exactly one identified and agreed problem.

- A patch MUST adhere to the code style guidelines of the project if these are defined.

- A patch MUST adhere to the "Evolution of Public Contracts" guidelines defined below.

- A patch SHALL NOT include non-trivial code from other projects unless the Contributor is the original author of that code.

- A patch MUST compile cleanly and pass project self-tests on at least the principle target platform.

- A patch commit message SHOULD consist of a single short (less than 50 character) line summarizing the change, optionally followed by a blank line and then a more thorough description.

- A "Correct Patch" is one that satisfies the above requirements.

### Development Contract

- Change on the project SHALL be governed by the pattern of accurately identifying problems and applying minimal, accurate solutions to these problems.

- To initiate changes, a user SHOULD log an issue on the project Platform issue tracker.

- The user SHOULD write the issue by describing the problem they face or observe.

- The user SHOULD seek consensus on the accuracy of their observation, and the value of solving the problem.

- Users SHALL NOT log feature requests, ideas, suggestions, or any solutions to problems that are not explicitly documented and provable.

- Thus, the release history of the project SHALL be a list of meaningful issues logged and solved.

- To work on an issue, a Contributor SHALL fork the project repository and then work on their forked repository.

- To submit a patch, a Contributor SHALL create a Platform pull request back to the project.

- A Contributor SHALL NOT commit changes directly to the project.

- To discuss a patch, people MAY comment on the Platform pull request, on the commit, or elsewhere.

- To accept or reject a patch, a Maintainer SHALL use the Platform interface.

- Maintainers SHALL NOT accept their own patches.

- Maintainers SHALL NOT make value judgments on correct patches.

- Maintainers SHALL merge correct patches rapidly.

- The Contributor MAY tag an issue as "Ready" after making a pull request for the issue.

- The user who created an issue SHOULD close the issue after checking the patch is successful.

- Maintainers SHOULD ask for improvements to incorrect patches and SHOULD reject incorrect patches if the Contributor does not respond constructively.

- Any Contributor who has value judgments on a correct patch SHOULD express these via their own patches.

- Maintainers MAY commit changes to non-source documentation directly to the project.

### Creating Stable Releases

- The project SHALL have one branch ("master") that always holds the latest in-progress version and SHOULD always build.

- The project SHALL NOT use topic branches for any reason. Personal forks MAY use topic branches.

- To make a stable release someone SHALL fork the repository by copying it and thus become maintainer of this repository.

- Forking a project for stabilization MAY be done unilaterally and without agreement of project maintainers.

- A stabilization project SHOULD be maintained by the same process as the main project.

- A patch to a stabilization project declared "stable" SHALL be accompanied by a reproducible test case.

### Evolution of Public Contracts

- All Public Contracts (APIs or protocols) SHOULD be documented.

- All Public Contracts SHOULD have space for extensibility and experimentation.

- A patch that modifies a stable Public Contract SHOULD not break existing applications unless there is overriding consensus on the value of doing this.

- A patch that introduces new features to a Public Contract SHOULD do so using new names.

- Old names SHOULD be deprecated in a systematic fashion by marking new names as "experimental" until they are stable, then marking the old names as "deprecated".

- When sufficient time has passed, old deprecated names SHOULD be marked "legacy" and eventually removed.

- Old names SHALL NOT be reused by new features.

- When old names are removed, their implementations MUST provoke an exception (assertion) if used by applications.

### Project Administration

- The project founders SHALL act as Administrators to manage the set of project Maintainers.

- The Administrators SHALL ensure their own succession over time by promoting the most effective Maintainers.

- A new Contributor who makes a correct patch SHALL be invited to become a Maintainer.

- Administrators MAY remove Maintainers who are inactive for an extended period of time, or who repeatedly fail to apply this process accurately.