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1 | Contributed Modules in Perl Core |
2 | A Social Contract about Artistic Control |
3 | |
4 | What follows is a statement about artistic control, defined as the ability |
5 | of authors of packages to guide the future of their code and maintain |
6 | control over their work. It is a recognition that authors should have |
7 | control over their work, and that it is a responsibility of the rest of |
8 | the Perl community to ensure that they retain this control. It is an |
9 | attempt to document the standards to which we, as Perl developers, intend |
10 | to hold ourselves. It is an attempt to write down rough guidelines about |
11 | the respect we owe each other as Perl developers. |
12 | |
13 | This statement is not a legal contract. This statement is not a legal |
14 | document in any way, shape, or form. Perl is distributed under the GNU |
15 | Public License and under the Artistic License; those are the precise legal |
16 | terms. This statement isn't about the law or licenses. It's about |
17 | community, mutual respect, trust, and good-faith cooperation. |
18 | |
19 | We recognize that the Perl core, defined as the software distributed with |
20 | the heart of Perl itself, is a joint project on the part of all of us. |
21 | >From time to time, a script, module, or set of modules (hereafter referred |
22 | to simply as a "module") will prove so widely useful and/or so integral to |
23 | the correct functioning of Perl itself that it should be distributed with |
24 | Perl core. This should never be done without the author's explicit |
25 | consent, and a clear recognition on all parts that this means the module |
26 | is being distributed under the same terms as Perl itself. A module author |
27 | should realize that inclusion of a module into the Perl core will |
28 | necessarily mean some loss of control over it, since changes may |
29 | occasionally have to be made on short notice or for consistency with the |
30 | rest of Perl. |
31 | |
32 | Once a module has been included in the Perl core, however, everyone |
33 | involved in maintaining Perl should be aware that the module is still the |
34 | property of the original author unless the original author explicitly |
35 | gives up their ownership of it. In particular: |
36 | |
37 | 1) The version of the module in the core should still be considered the |
38 | work of the original author. All patches, bug reports, and so forth |
39 | should be fed back to them. Their development directions should be |
40 | respected whenever possible. |
41 | |
42 | 2) Patches may be applied by the pumpkin holder without the explicit |
43 | cooperation of the module author if and only if they are very minor, |
44 | time-critical in some fashion (such as urgent security fixes), or if |
45 | the module author cannot be reached. Those patches must still be |
46 | given back to the author when possible, and if the author decides on |
47 | an alternate fix in their version, that fix should be strongly |
48 | preferred unless there is a serious problem with it. Any changes not |
49 | endorsed by the author should be marked as such, and the contributor |
50 | of the change acknowledged. |
51 | |
52 | 3) The version of the module distributed with Perl should, whenever |
53 | possible, be the latest version of the module as distributed by the |
54 | author (the latest non-beta version in the case of public Perl |
55 | releases), although the pumpkin holder may hold off on upgrading the |
56 | version of the module distributed with Perl to the latest version |
57 | until the latest version has had sufficient testing. |
58 | |
59 | In other words, the author of a module should be considered to have final |
60 | say on modifications to their module whenever possible (bearing in mind |
61 | that it's expected that everyone involved will work together and arrive at |
62 | reasonable compromises when there are disagreements). |
63 | |
64 | As a last resort, however: |
65 | |
66 | 4) If the author's vision of the future of their module is sufficiently |
67 | different from the vision of the pumpkin holder and perl5-porters as a |
68 | whole so as to cause serious problems for Perl, the pumpkin holder may |
69 | choose to formally fork the version of the module in the core from the |
70 | one maintained by the author. This should not be done lightly and |
71 | should *always* if at all possible be done only after direct input |
72 | from Larry. If this is done, it must then be made explicit in the |
73 | module as distributed with Perl core that it is a forked version and |
74 | that while it is based on the original author's work, it is no longer |
75 | maintained by them. This must be noted in both the documentation and |
76 | in the comments in the source of the module. |
77 | |
78 | Again, this should be a last resort only. Ideally, this should never |
79 | happen, and every possible effort at cooperation and compromise should be |
80 | made before doing this. If it does prove necessary to fork a module for |
81 | the overall health of Perl, proper credit must be given to the original |
82 | author in perpetuity and the decision should be constantly re-evaluated to |
83 | see if a remerging of the two branches is possible down the road. |
84 | |
85 | In all dealings with contributed modules, everyone maintaining Perl should |
86 | keep in mind that the code belongs to the original author, that they may |
87 | not be on perl5-porters at any given time, and that a patch is not |
88 | official unless it has been integrated into the author's copy of the |
89 | module. To aid with this, and with points #1, #2, and #3 above, contact |
90 | information for the authors of all contributed modules should be kept with |
91 | the Perl distribution. |
92 | |
93 | Finally, the Perl community as a whole recognizes that respect for |
94 | ownership of code, respect for artistic control, proper credit, and active |
95 | effort to prevent unintentional code skew or communication gaps is vital |
96 | to the health of the community and Perl itself. Members of a community |
97 | should not normally have to resort to rules and laws to deal with each |
98 | other, and this document, although it contains rules so as to be clear, is |
99 | about an attitude and general approach. The first step in any dispute |
100 | should be open communication, respect for opposing views, and an attempt |
101 | at a compromise. In nearly every circumstance nothing more will be |
102 | necessary, and certainly no more drastic measure should be used until |
103 | every avenue of communication and discussion has failed. |