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+ Contributed Modules in Perl Core
+ A Social Contract about Artistic Control
+
+What follows is a statement about artistic control, defined as the ability
+of authors of packages to guide the future of their code and maintain
+control over their work. It is a recognition that authors should have
+control over their work, and that it is a responsibility of the rest of
+the Perl community to ensure that they retain this control. It is an
+attempt to document the standards to which we, as Perl developers, intend
+to hold ourselves. It is an attempt to write down rough guidelines about
+the respect we owe each other as Perl developers.
+
+This statement is not a legal contract. This statement is not a legal
+document in any way, shape, or form. Perl is distributed under the GNU
+Public License and under the Artistic License; those are the precise legal
+terms. This statement isn't about the law or licenses. It's about
+community, mutual respect, trust, and good-faith cooperation.
+
+We recognize that the Perl core, defined as the software distributed with
+the heart of Perl itself, is a joint project on the part of all of us.
+>From time to time, a script, module, or set of modules (hereafter referred
+to simply as a "module") will prove so widely useful and/or so integral to
+the correct functioning of Perl itself that it should be distributed with
+Perl core. This should never be done without the author's explicit
+consent, and a clear recognition on all parts that this means the module
+is being distributed under the same terms as Perl itself. A module author
+should realize that inclusion of a module into the Perl core will
+necessarily mean some loss of control over it, since changes may
+occasionally have to be made on short notice or for consistency with the
+rest of Perl.
+
+Once a module has been included in the Perl core, however, everyone
+involved in maintaining Perl should be aware that the module is still the
+property of the original author unless the original author explicitly
+gives up their ownership of it. In particular:
+
+ 1) The version of the module in the core should still be considered the
+ work of the original author. All patches, bug reports, and so forth
+ should be fed back to them. Their development directions should be
+ respected whenever possible.
+
+ 2) Patches may be applied by the pumpkin holder without the explicit
+ cooperation of the module author if and only if they are very minor,
+ time-critical in some fashion (such as urgent security fixes), or if
+ the module author cannot be reached. Those patches must still be
+ given back to the author when possible, and if the author decides on
+ an alternate fix in their version, that fix should be strongly
+ preferred unless there is a serious problem with it. Any changes not
+ endorsed by the author should be marked as such, and the contributor
+ of the change acknowledged.
+
+ 3) The version of the module distributed with Perl should, whenever
+ possible, be the latest version of the module as distributed by the
+ author (the latest non-beta version in the case of public Perl
+ releases), although the pumpkin holder may hold off on upgrading the
+ version of the module distributed with Perl to the latest version
+ until the latest version has had sufficient testing.
+
+In other words, the author of a module should be considered to have final
+say on modifications to their module whenever possible (bearing in mind
+that it's expected that everyone involved will work together and arrive at
+reasonable compromises when there are disagreements).
+
+As a last resort, however:
+
+ 4) If the author's vision of the future of their module is sufficiently
+ different from the vision of the pumpkin holder and perl5-porters as a
+ whole so as to cause serious problems for Perl, the pumpkin holder may
+ choose to formally fork the version of the module in the core from the
+ one maintained by the author. This should not be done lightly and
+ should *always* if at all possible be done only after direct input
+ from Larry. If this is done, it must then be made explicit in the
+ module as distributed with Perl core that it is a forked version and
+ that while it is based on the original author's work, it is no longer
+ maintained by them. This must be noted in both the documentation and
+ in the comments in the source of the module.
+
+Again, this should be a last resort only. Ideally, this should never
+happen, and every possible effort at cooperation and compromise should be
+made before doing this. If it does prove necessary to fork a module for
+the overall health of Perl, proper credit must be given to the original
+author in perpetuity and the decision should be constantly re-evaluated to
+see if a remerging of the two branches is possible down the road.
+
+In all dealings with contributed modules, everyone maintaining Perl should
+keep in mind that the code belongs to the original author, that they may
+not be on perl5-porters at any given time, and that a patch is not
+official unless it has been integrated into the author's copy of the
+module. To aid with this, and with points #1, #2, and #3 above, contact
+information for the authors of all contributed modules should be kept with
+the Perl distribution.
+
+Finally, the Perl community as a whole recognizes that respect for
+ownership of code, respect for artistic control, proper credit, and active
+effort to prevent unintentional code skew or communication gaps is vital
+to the health of the community and Perl itself. Members of a community
+should not normally have to resort to rules and laws to deal with each
+other, and this document, although it contains rules so as to be clear, is
+about an attitude and general approach. The first step in any dispute
+should be open communication, respect for opposing views, and an attempt
+at a compromise. In nearly every circumstance nothing more will be
+necessary, and certainly no more drastic measure should be used until
+every avenue of communication and discussion has failed.
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / commitdiff