[Spice-devel] SPICE: contributor guidelines

[Francesco Giudici]

Hi SPICE community!
    After thinking a while on the discussion in the thread:
"SPICE: changing the merge rules - a proposal"
I would like to come back on the topic and make explicit the way merge 
requests, changes and reviews are expected to be managed in our 
community. The core points that seems to me all of us want and agree 
upon are:

* Each merge request / patch should get a review (trivial patches may be 
an exception and be merged without review).

* Each merge request / patch should get a review in a timely manner.

Note that the meaning of "timely" and what a "trivial" patch is are not 
defined: I think this is exactly the point for an open source community. 
We don't want strict rules that force people to contribute in a specific 
way or under a strict time-frame and I (we) trust each other to do the 
right thing in respect of the project and the community. This is enough 
once there are clear guidelines.
There could be errors from time to time, sure... but as long as we stay 
together and collaborate as a community, they can be easily fixed.

Unfortunately enforcing some strict rules was exactly what I tried to do 
in my previous mail. It may have brought tension to our community and 
that was not my intention, sorry for that.

So, for the sake of clarity for actual and future contributors, if we 
want to write down a short and simple list of "rules" (guidelines) for 
contributing to the SPICE project, I would say they could be:

1) Get a review before merging a non-trivial patch
2) Keep asking reviews more and more if not getting one
3) Ensure each one asking a review gets one in a timely manner

I would love to read your comments, opinions and ideas.

Francesco