| 1 | -*-text-*- |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Guidelines for contributions to the Guile Recipes manual |
| 4 | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| 5 | |
| 6 | 1. Licensing |
| 7 | |
| 8 | Contributions must be licensed under the GNU Free Documentation |
| 9 | License (GFDL) or the GNU General Public License (GPL). |
| 10 | |
| 11 | 2. Copyright |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Contributors are encouraged, but not required, to assign the copyright |
| 14 | for their contribution to the FSF. `not required' also covers the |
| 15 | case where a contributor has every intention of assigning copyright, |
| 16 | but the process is simply taking a little time. Note that: |
| 17 | |
| 18 | - If you assign your copyright, other people (who have also assigned |
| 19 | copyright) can make non-trivial enhancements to your contribution |
| 20 | without any difficulties arising. If you don't assign copyright for |
| 21 | contribution, it complicates the ownership picture if other people |
| 22 | make non-trivial changes to it; and if the burden of tracking |
| 23 | copyright ownership becomes too great, it will be easier simply to |
| 24 | remove that contribution from the manual. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | - If it transpires that non-assigned copyrights turn out to be a bad |
| 27 | thing (for whatever reason), the maintainers reserve the right to |
| 28 | remove non-assigned contributions from the manual. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | 3. Manual organization |
| 31 | |
| 32 | Each contribution has its own chapter and lives in its own Texinfo |
| 33 | file. Chapters in related areas may be grouped together, but maybe |
| 34 | not. Instead, the introduction to the manual will contain references |
| 35 | to chapters, and the introductory text will group those references |
| 36 | appropriately. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | 4. Copyright ownership |
| 39 | |
| 40 | Given this organization, ownership for copyright purposes is |
| 41 | straightforward. Each Texinfo file is either owned by its |
| 42 | contributor, or assigned to the FSF. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Every contribution's chapter should begin with a statement of who |
| 45 | contributed it, who owns the copyright, and its license (GFDL or |
| 46 | GPL). These statements should appear in the printed and online |
| 47 | documentation -- i.e. they are _not_ comments. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | 5. Documentation vs. code |
| 50 | |
| 51 | Contributed material should be informative and helpful, and should fit |
| 52 | in with the manual syntax. In general, this means that a |
| 53 | straightforward lump of code is _not_ good enough -- it also needs the |
| 54 | statements mentioned above, introduction, explanation or |
| 55 | documentation, Texinfo markup, etc. |
| 56 | |
| 57 | Note that the maintainers may be able to accept a contribution that |
| 58 | requires substantial extra work if copyright for that contribution has |
| 59 | been assigned to the FSF. Where copyright has not been assigned, the |
| 60 | contribution has to be already finished by its author. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | 6. Good indexing |
| 63 | |
| 64 | In practice, the manual index will be a very important tool for |
| 65 | someone looking for an example that is useful to them. So please give |
| 66 | some thought to good indexing in your contribution. |
| 67 | |
| 68 | 7. Submissions |
| 69 | |
| 70 | To submit material for inclusion in Guile Recipes, please send your |
| 71 | contribution to the guile-sources mailing list |
| 72 | <guile-sources@gnu.org>. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | As far as past material is concerned, I do have an archive of material |
| 75 | that I will ask people about including individually, but it would make |
| 76 | things easier for me if people resubmitted past material to |
| 77 | guile-sources anyway. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | -- |
| 80 | Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net> April 20th 2001 |