Alternatives and detailed information of meta

Note that this README (the manifesto) is a work in progress and is meant to be collaboratively improved. Please contribute!*

What is OCaml-community?

OCaml-community is a GitHub organization dedicated to the collaborative and community-driven long-term maintenance of OCaml packages.

In other words, the organization provides a place to host open source OCaml packages that benefit from collective maintenance.

Unmaintained packages that are of significant interest can be adopted by ocaml-community. Maintenance will then be performed collaboratively by the community. An official maintainer will be assigned to individual packages to make decisions about pull requests where possible.

At minimum, maintenance consists of updating software to keep it working over time, as well as maintaining the corresponding OPAM package. It also includes adding needed features, refactoring code, adding and improving documentation, improving the style of the code, adding tests, etc.

Changes made during maintenance should take into account the needs of the existing user community, including the need for backward compatibility.

Who runs this GitHub organization?

This organization is run by volunteers from the OCaml community. Everyone is welcome (you don't need to be a very experienced OCaml programmer to participate).

How do I submit a package for inclusion?

We currently follow (roughly) the following process:

Someone who wants to get a new package included submits an issue to the meta repository. The issue must contain:
1. The name of and information about the package, including why it's of significance. (This is meant to be a low bar; even a few actual users beyond the author is enough to mean "significant.")
2. The license that the code is under, to allow us to verify it is under a reasonable open source license and thus eligible for inclusion.
3. The current location of the most up to date version of the code (say a github repository, or an old sourceforge download, or even some abandoned tar file on an ftp site.)
4. Who the last known maintainer was, and what efforts have been made to contact them. (Note that the submitter might themselves be the last known maintainer.)
5. If the last known maintainer has been successfully contacted, have they agreed to hand over the code? If they disagreed, why do you think the code should be adopted anyway?
6. Have you found someone to act as the initial owner for the code, and if so, who will that be? (Typically that will be at least the person proposing inclusion, though there may be exceptions.)
Following acceptance, the new repository is migrated or created. The existing code should be imported before any changes are made, to preserve the pre-import state in the version control history.
1. In the case of a github repository that is being voluntarily handed over by the existing maintainer, arrangements should be made to transfer the existing repository to the ocaml-community organization. This will preserve things like existing issues and pull requests.
2. In the case of a repository that was not maintained on GitHub, the best known version of the git repository will be imported.
3. In case of a non-git VCS repository, the repository should be converted to git to preserve history and imported.
4. If the best known version of the code is simply a release somewhere (like a tar file), it should be turned into a git repository and imported.
If the new maintainers are not already part of the ocaml-community organization, they will be added as collaborators on that repository with commit privileges.
A few changes should be made to the code as soon as possible following repository migration, not necessarily in this order:
1. A .travis.yml file should be added to the repository and the CI system should be turned on by an administrator. Generally, builds should be tried on the latest several versions of OCaml, on both Linux and on MacOS.
2. The new code owners should be placed into a CODEOWNERS file in the repository.
3. The repository should be carefully checked for references to old repository locations, home pages, maintainers, etc., and these references should be updated.
4. The code should be updated so that it compiles and runs on the latest version of OCaml.
5. An OPAM package should be created and submitted for the package if one does not yet exist, or the existing package should be updated to point to the new repository location.
6. If feasible, older build systems should be converted to dune.
Following import, the people listed in CODEOWNERS are expected to handle pull requests and submitted issues with reasonable speed, and are expected to keep the package compiling as new versions of OCaml are released. If a maintainer cannot continue such duties, or requires assistance, they should ask by filing an issue on the meta repository.

FAQ

Why the name ocaml-community?

The ocaml-community organization takes its inspiration from the similarly-named elm-community and coq-community projects.
What is the difference between this and the ocaml organization's repositories?

The official ocaml organization is for maintaining the OCaml compiler itself, OPAM, odoc, and other key infrastructural software. The ocaml-community GitHub organization is for adopting and maintaining packages that are of widespread use but might lack active maintainers.
Can I propose ocaml-community adopt a project I wrote?

Yes, you can propose a project you wrote, as a way of preparing to pass on the maintenance to other community members.
How can I propose changes to a package, or to community documentation like this very file?

Simply make a pull request. You can also open an issue requesting commit access.
Will all projects in ocaml-community have some Continuous Integration (CI) set up?

CI and automated testing is important for keeping code well maintained. We currently make use of the Travis CI system, and we suggest that all repositories added to ocaml-community should have Travis configs added.

The Conduct We Expect of Project Participants

Polite behavior, and what to do if someone else isn't polite.

Contributors to our repositories are expected to behave in a friendly and welcoming manner. When people contribute fixes to a project you're helping to maintain, remember that they're spending time and effort improving open source software, often with no compensation other than the thanks and good-will of other people. Be nice, and thank them for the work they've done.

If you don't like some technical aspect of a proposal or contribution, then try to convey that in a polite and friendly manner. We're all trying to make the best possible technical decisions to improve software used by the OCaml community, and being rude to others interferes with making clear decisions, alienates valuable contributors, and makes everyone's life more stressful.

If, say, someone is angry and irate when they post a bug report, there is no reason to reply in a like manner — de-escalate the situation, don't throw fuel on the fire. (Everyone has bad days, and there's no reason to turn someone else's bad mood into a sustained argument.)

It is especially important to never make a technical discussion personal. Don't make personal attacks against other people, and in fact, avoid discussing other people when you should be discussing technical issues. When posting in the issue and pull request trackers, stick to discussion of the technical merits of a request, and be polite while you're doing it. Don't stray away from technical topics. Never call an idea "stupid"; it's both insulting and uninformative. Instead, politely explain what the problems with a proposal are.

If the other person isn't being polite, don't respond in kind, it only escalates things. At most, very, very, gently point them at this text. If the other person's bad behavior is difficult to ignore, or is habitual, or they have become a problem for the community, ask the owners of the OCaml-community organization to intervene. We will not disclose that you have complained without your permission. We will attempt to get the person in question to change their behavior, or, if that appears to be futile, we will ban them from further participation in the community.

(None of this should need saying, as you should probably try to be polite throughout your life regardless of the situation. Being nice, even when you're under stress or the other person isn't being nice, is always the best policy.)

Our expectations for our contributors, administrators, and package maintainers.

We expect contributors:

To work in good faith to improve the software we maintain.
To try to keep our projects welcoming and fun for other people to work on.
To presume good faith on the part of other contributors.
To refrain from personal attacks, ad hominem argumentation, and the like.
To always remain polite and civil.
To restrict their discussions to relevant technical points.
To thank others for their contributions, as there is often little or no other reward for working on open source software than the gratitude of one's peers.
To request assistance from the community owners if an interpersonal problem becomes intractable, rather than either suffering in silence or deviating from civil behavior.

We expect our administrators:

To work in good faith to maximize the productivity of the community.
To work to keep our community enjoyable to work in, cheerful, and free of incivility.
To intervene quickly if they notice a conversation is veering away from the standards we seek to uphold, or if a reasonable request is made by participants in our community to intervene.
Not to neglect important technical requests made by community members.
To do their best (within reason) to make sure that important packages remain well maintained.
To act responsibly when selecting new package maintainers and administrators, taking into account both technical ability and the ability of newly selected people to maintain a friendly, productive, and welcoming work environment.

We expect our project maintainers:

To uphold the same standards of conduct that all other community members are held to.
To handle bug reports and pull requests with reasonable speed.
To make sure that their released packages work with the latest version of OCaml, and to expeditiously create new releases if critical bugs are fixed.
To turn over their projects to new maintainers if they cease to have the time to manage their duties.

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