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What about contributing to the project? #3

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andris9 opened this issue Jul 12, 2013 · 8 comments
Closed

What about contributing to the project? #3

andris9 opened this issue Jul 12, 2013 · 8 comments

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@andris9
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andris9 commented Jul 12, 2013

Before anyone can contribute you should clarify some details about this repo. At first the licensing issue mentioned in #1 and #2, why would anyone contribute under such shady terms given by the CC license? If I fork the repo and make changes to it, I'm already violating the license, since my fork is a forbidden derivative.

Secondly, is this an active repo, the so called "master" branch, where the actual development is being made or is it just a dump from you own svn? Will the code stay as it is, or will you update it even if this is only a mirror repo, not the master?

Is this repo going to be maintained, is anyone ever going to read and reply to this issue ticket or not?

If the license is a small tööõnnetus and will be replaced with GPL (or better yet, with MIT/BSD) and you are actually going to maintain the repo, then welcome to the open source development community. I'm sure a lot of people would love to help you out with the code, whic currently does not look very good (no tests, no docs, no code comments, no nothing - and thus, not very trustworthy).

If the repo is going to stay as it is, then I don't see any point of releasing it at all. Noone can't contribute (forking and modifying, which is needed for contribution is prohibited), no one can understand (there's no docs) and no one can trust it (there is no tests).

@svenheiberg
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Hello!

Commenting on licensing is not my competence, but I'm rather sure there shall be answer to those questions as well.

No, this is not the repo that is used for active development. The active development takes place in the private repositories of the software developer (currently Cybernetica AS).

Yes, this repo will be maintained. The next milestone is mid-august. NEC (National Electoral Committee) plans to publish the final source version also in this repo, so the code that can be found here is the actual code that is used for election.

Some additional documentation is going to be released before the august though.

@andris9
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andris9 commented Jul 12, 2013

You should mention this in the README as well - if this is not an actual development repo but just a place to see the code, then there is no point for anyone to make pull requests etc. which is actively encouraged by GitHub

In fact, there is not much point keeping the code in GitHub at all, you should probably put the code up at your homepage as a download, together with checksums etc.

@dv
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dv commented Jul 12, 2013

I disagree andris9, Github is awesome for browsing the code without having to download it, as well as subscribing to future updates and encouraging discussion using issues.

@andris9
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andris9 commented Jul 12, 2013

I hope I'm wrong about this but I do fear that this repo is going to be just a one way street - you might have a discussion around here and file issues and such but it is never heard by the people behind this project. It is only going to be a publication channel, where everyone can browse the code for the latest release but nothing more.

Actually, if no contributions are expected from the community and the code is here only for making it visible for the public eye, then the strange license choice actually makes sense.

@defvol
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defvol commented Jul 13, 2013

there's a difference between an open source project and making your source code public

@millette
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To paraphrase, "In Estonia, projects contribute to you" (you don't contribute to them but the source is there for your edification).

@svenheiberg
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Readme should clarify this

@WhyNotHugo
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Actually, you CANNOT contibute to this code, or provide patches for issues you may find. You may only point them out.
Due to the current license, derivates are not allowed (and ilegal, due to copyright law), therefore, a fixed version or patch can't be created (because it would be derivate work).

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