OpenLDAP, Guidelines for Contributing

Guidelines for Contributing

OpenLDAP encourages contribution of Open Source software and documentation from the community. We have adopted various guidelines to facilitate integration of contributed software and documentation. This document details guidelines for contributing.

To submit material for consideration, use the Issue Tracking System.

Programmers should also read our Programming Guidelines.

Contents:

General Guidelines
Submission Formats
IPR Notice Guidelines
Submitting Contributions

General Guidelines

We accept contributions of both complete LDAP related software packages (known as contribware) as well as changes (e.g, patches) to existing OpenLDAP Software package and its associated documentation.

patches
publications and such
contribware

patches

Each software change should be concise, self-contained, and made against up-to-date source code. That is:

One functional change per patch,
One patch per functional change, and

Generally, the patch(es) should be made against the tip of the master branch of the OpenLDAP Git repository.

Publications and such

The OpenLDAP Project welcomes contributions of independently-authored LDAP-related articles, papers, and other publications.

contribware

The OpenLDAP Project welcomes contributions of independently-developed stand-alone LDAP-related software packages suitable for distribution separately from existing packages (e.g., OpenLDAP Software, JLDAP, JDBC-LDAP). If you are the author (and owner) of such a package and would like to contribute it to the OpenLDAP Project, please send email to project@OpenLDAP.org.

In general, contributed software packages should work with current releases of OpenLDAP software.

Submission Formats

Submissions should be submitted as a patch suitable for integration into the OpenLDAP Git source repository using git-am(1). Specifically, you should use git-format-patch(1) to construct the patch. Please review patches before submission to ensure only required changes to intended files are included in the patch AND all the intended changes are included in the patch.

Generating Patches

git format-patch HEAD^

IPR Notice Guidelines

All contributions must be Open Source and must be provided with appropriate notices. Please provide the appropriate notices in the body of the issue filed for the patch in the Issue Tracking System.

Notices for OpenLDAP patches
Notices for contribware

Note that if you assigned your rights in the materials you wish to contribute to another party, such as your employer, this party (or their authorized agent) must make the contribution. These guidelines are primarily written for individual contributors. Corporate contributors will need to make some adjustments to the notices.

Notices for OpenLDAP patches

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice.

If providing a patch for a different OpenLDAP package, e.g. OpenLDAP JLDAP, replace each occurance of "OpenLDAP Software" below with the name of that package.

Files containing patches representing significant blocks of new code (10 lines or greater) must include a notice of origin:

The attached patch file is derived from OpenLDAP Software. All of the modifications to OpenLDAP Software represented in the following patch(es) were developed by <YOUR NAME> <YOUR-EMAIL-ADDRESS>. I have not assigned rights and/or interest in this work to any party.

This notice must be followed by an appropriate rights statement.

If the patch is derived from other works, you must include a detailed description of these others works. The description should include specific references to the location where these works can be obtained, such as URL to their location on the Internet.

If you have assigned rights and/or interest in this work to another party, such as your employer (possibly through your employment agreement), you must state which rights you have assigned and to whom. For instance, "By virtue of my employment agreement with EMPLOYER-NAME, I have assigned my rights and interest in this work to EMPLOYER-NAME."

Below is an example notice for someone making a contribution on behalf of your employer:

The attached file is derived from OpenLDAP Software. All of the modifications to OpenLDAP Software represented in the following patch(es) were developed by <YOUR-EMPLOYER>. <YOUR-EMPLOYER> has not assigned rights and/or interest in this work to any party. I, <YOUR-NAME> am authorized by <YOUR-EMPLOYER>, my employer, to release this work under the following terms.

This notice must be followed by an appropriate rights statement.

For small modifications (bug fixes, minor enhancements, etc.), we suggest the modifications be placed into the public domain so that they can be freely incorporated into OpenLDAP Software (as well as other works).

I, <YOUR NAME>, hereby place the following modifications to OpenLDAP Software (and only these modifications) into the public domain. Hence, these modifications may be freely used and/or redistributed for any purpose with or without attribution and/or other notice.

A corporate example:

<YOUR-EMPLOYER> hereby place the following modifications to OpenLDAP Software (and only these modifications) into the public domain. Hence, these modifications may be freely used and/or redistributed for any purpose with or without attribution and/or other notice.

While you may use the above for large modifications as well, you may desire to maintain rights in your modifications. However, to ensure license compatibility, we require all contributions (your modifications) to be provided under compatible terms. Hence, we suggest the following statement be used:

The attached modifications to OpenLDAP Software are subject to the following notice:
Copyright <YEAR> <YOUR NAME>
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted only as authorized by the OpenLDAP Public License.

By making this statement, you are allowing redistribution and use of your modifications under the same terms as OpenLDAP Software itself.

Alternative rights statements will not generally be accepted. The OpenLDAP Foundation should be contacted at foundation@OpenLDAP.org prior to submitting patches with alternative right notices.

One alternative not discussed here is copyright assignment. If you wish to assign copyright you hold in contributions to OpenLDAP Software to the OpenLDAP Foundation, please contact The OpenLDAP Foundation at foundation@OpenLDAP.org for instructions.

Notices for contribware

Contact the OpenLDAP Foundation at foundation@OpenLDAP.org for guidance.

Note: contributions for inclusion in OpenLDAP Software or other OpenLDAP distributed software packages (JLDAP, JDBC-LDAP) do not fall in this category. Follow the patch instructions above.

Submitting Contributions

To submit your contribution, use our Issue Tracking System. This requires you to fill out a simple web form. Be sure to use an appropriate summary as well as provide details concerning your patch in the body of the message. The above notices should also be added as a comment to the issue after it is created. Then either attach your patch to the created issue or if this is a large change, create an account on the gitlab instance and create a merge request with your changes for review.