[m-dev.] for review: web page on contributed code
Tyson Dowd
trd at cs.mu.OZ.AU
Tue Oct 26 17:00:27 AEST 1999
Hi,
Fergus, I've updated these files to reflect what a couple of
us discussed last week with respect to copyright ownership
of contributed code. This diff supersedes the previous one.
I'm not sure whether this should be part of the discussion on
the web page (but we should definitely say something about it), so any
comments about this would be useful. For everyone who didn't discuss
copyright ownership of contributed code then you might want to read
about it here and let me know what you think.
===================================================================
Estimated hours taken: 1.5
Describe how to contribute code to the Mercury system.
w3/Makefile:
w3/contributions.php3:
Add contributions.html to the output files.
w3/include/contributions.inc:
Describe how to contribute code.
w3/include/menubar.inc:
Add a link to this page to the menubar.
cvs server: Diffing .
Index: Makefile
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/mercury1/repository/w3/Makefile,v
retrieving revision 1.9
diff -u -r1.9 Makefile
--- Makefile 1999/03/05 16:46:28 1.9
+++ Makefile 1999/10/26 06:56:48
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
download.html \
contact.html \
applications.html \
+ contributions.html \
search.html
DIRS=contact download information mailing-lists tutorial
Index: contributions.php3
===================================================================
RCS file: contributions.php3
diff -N contributions.php3
--- /dev/null Thu Mar 4 04:20:11 1999
+++ contributions.php3 Tue Oct 26 16:56:48 1999
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+<HTML>
+<?
+ $title="Contributing to Mercury";
+ $dir=".";
+ $root=".";
+ $include="contributions.inc";
+ include "$root/include/template.inc"
+?>
+</HTML>
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Index: include/contributions.inc
===================================================================
RCS file: contributions.inc
diff -N contributions.inc
--- /dev/null Thu Mar 4 04:20:11 1999
+++ contributions.inc Tue Oct 26 16:56:48 1999
@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+<H2>Contributed Programs and Libraries</H2>
+
+<H3>Mercury Libraries and Programs</H3>
+If you've written some code using Mercury we'd love to find out about
+it. If you think it might be in any way useful to other people, you
+might be interested in making your code available for download.
+That way others can learn from it, use it and improve on it.
+<p>
+We are happy to place it on the Mercury web and ftp sites for you.
+Fame and fortune will surely follow.
+<p>
+If you would like to contribute a library or program written using
+Mercury for others to download and use, here's how you can do it.
+<UL>
+<LI>
+Choose a license for your code that allows other people to
+download and use it (by default, copyright law says that nobody
+but the author can copy or distribute modified copies).
+Something that meets the open source definition would be good
+(see <a href="http://www.opensource.org">www.opensource.org</a>).
+A pre-written license is always much easier to get right than rolling
+your own. The LGPL and GPL licenses are pretty compatible with the rest
+of the Mercury distribution. The Artistic, BSD-like (without
+advertising clause) and plain old public domain (e.g. no copyright at
+all) are also pretty popular.
+<LI>
+Apply this license to your code (e.g. make sure your source
+files and README file clearly state your name/employer and where to find
+the licensing conditions and include a file with the conditions). A
+contact email address is also a good thing to include here.
+<LI>
+Make your software available on an ftp or http site
+somewhere. If possible try to include a version number in your
+tar or zip file (e.g. mylibrary-0.4.zip or myprogram-1.2.1.tar.gz).
+If you can't do this, attach it in email in the next step.
+<LI>
+Email <a href="mailto:mercury at cs.mu.oz.au">mercury at cs.mu.oz.au</a>.
+and let us know that it's available (or it is attached), what it is,
+and give us the URL. We'll check it out and if all is well will add it
+to the archive.
+</UL>
+
+
+<H3>Modifications to the Mercury System</H3>
+
+If you've modified something in the Mercury system and would like it to
+become part of the main distribution, we'd be very interested in your
+work.
+<p>
+The mercury-developers mailing list is intended for discussing proposed
+changes to the Mercury system. If you would like to contribute reasonably
+frequently it might be a good idea to subscribe, or at least browse the
+archives of this list, simply to get an idea of the kinds of standards
+required for integrating code into the main distribution.
+You can also email <a href="mailto:mercury at cs.mu.oz.au">mercury at cs.mu.oz.au</a>
+and discuss it with the Mercury team.
+<p>
+There is an issue with copyright ownership in the Mercury system.
+We'd like to retain the freedom to modify the license of the
+Mercury system in future releases (in particular, we may decide to
+dual-license the Mercury system so as to make it compatible with other
+open source licenses out there). Doing this with hundreds of copyright
+holders is practically impossible, since you need the agreement of every
+single one of them to make changes.
+<p>
+Under the current license you are free to make any modifications
+you like and distribute them. However we ask that if you want your
+modifications to be merged back into the main line of development, you
+talk to us about this issue. The easiest solution is to place your
+changes into the public domain (e.g. give up copyright ownership on
+them) and then we can merge them into the main compiler. This is a nice
+simple mechanism for getting around the hundreds of authors problem.
+If you have an employer who has some control over your copyright, we
+have some standard documents for doing this kind of thing. It is almost
+always preferable to ask an employer to sign a form than to try to explain
+the concept (possibly confusing or scaring them in the process). Please
+email <a href="mailto:mercury at cs.mu.oz.au">mercury at cs.mu.oz.au</a> if
+you want to discuss contributing changes to the Mercury system.
+<p>
+
+
Index: include/menubar.inc
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/mercury1/repository/w3/include/menubar.inc,v
retrieving revision 1.5
diff -u -r1.5 menubar.inc
--- menubar.inc 1998/11/19 07:54:56 1.5
+++ menubar.inc 1999/10/26 06:56:48
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@
<SMALL>
<a href="<?echo $root?>/applications.html">Applications</a><BR>
<a href="<?echo $root?>/mcorba.html">MCORBA</a> <BR>
+ <a href="<?echo $root?>/contributions.html">Contributing Code</a> <BR>
</SMALL>
<P>
<B><a href="<?echo $root?>/contact.html">Contact</a></B>
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--
Tyson Dowd #
# Surreal humour isn't eveyone's cup of fur.
trd at cs.mu.oz.au #
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~trd #
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