Contributors

Initially, newcomers to the project generally participate in an informal role as a contributor. These types of contributors have no long term responsibility to the project.

Contributor Advantages

  • Ability to submit large pull requests and patches

  • Recognition as an open source contributor

  • We do our best to thank contributors in the GeoTools release notes

Note

Looking for work? Recognition can take the form of a letter of reference from a PMC member. Participating in open source is a great way to build experience.

Contributor Responsibilities

  1. Talk to the developer list prior to starting any major work.

  2. Code Contribution License: ensure you are comfortable providing the Open Source Geospatial Foundation with access to your work. If you are employee you will need to talk to your manager as well.

    For details see Code Contribution License.

  3. Large contributions should include the contributor name in the list of authors of the class documentation for any file in which the contributor has made significant changes. That is the contributor’s name should be added using the @author javadoc tag.

Contributor Process

  1. In order to volunteer as a Contributor you need to submit a change:

    • Small Contribution / Single Source Code File

      For a very small change (less than one file) a committer can review and apply the change on your behalf. This is a quick workaround allowing us to correct spelling mistakes in the documentation, clarify a javadoc, or accept a very small fix.

      We understand you may have to update several test cases to verify your change fixes its intended problem.

    • Large Contributions / Multiple Files / New Files

      To contribute a new file, or if your change effects several files, sign a Code Contribution License.

    Procedure:

  2. We also need to check that you have a contribution license on file with OSGeo.

    Procedure:

  3. Review

    Keep in mind that we have limited volunteers to review your work. Providing a test case, using the project source code formatting, and being available to answer questions all contribute to making you change easier to evaluate and accept.

    Procedure: