Revision as of 23:29, 17 February 2013

OpenStack Code of Conduct

This Code of Conduct covers your behavior as a member of the OpenStack Community, in any forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, install-fest, public meeting or private correspondence. The Community Council, once it is formed, will arbitrate in any dispute over the conduct of a member of the community.

     Be considerate. Your work will be used by other people,
     and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision
     you take will affect users and colleagues, and we expect you to
     take those consequences into account when making decisions. For
     example, when we are in a feature freeze, please don't upload
     dramatically new versions of critical system software, as other
     people will be testing the frozen system and will not be
     expecting big changes.

     Be respectful. The OpenStack community and its members treat
     one another with respect. Everyone can make a valuable
     contribution to OpenStack. We may not always agree, but
     disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor
     manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then,
     but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal
     attack. It's important to remember that a community where people
     feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. We
     expect members of the OpenStack community to be respectful when
     dealing with other contributors as well as with people outside
     the OpenStack project and with users of OpenStack.

     Be collaborative. OpenStack and Free Software are about
     collaboration and working together. Collaboration reduces
     redundancy of work done in the Free Software world, and improves
     the quality of the software produced. You should aim to
     collaborate with other OpenStack maintainers, as well as with the
     upstream community that is interested in the work you do. Your
     work should be done transparently and patches should
     be given back to the community when they are made, not just when
     the distribution releases. If you wish to work on new code for
     existing upstream projects, at least keep those projects
     informed of your ideas and progress. It may not be possible to
     get consensus from upstream or even from your colleagues about
     the correct implementation of an idea, so don't feel obliged to
     have that agreement before you begin, but at least keep the
     outside world informed of your work, and publish your work in a
     way that allows outsiders to test, discuss and contribute to
     your efforts.

     When you disagree, consult others. Disagreements, both
     political and technical, happen all the time and the OpenStack
     community is no exception. The important goal is not to avoid
     disagreements or differing views but to resolve them
     constructively. You should turn to the community and to the
     community process to seek advice and to resolve
     disagreements. We have the Technical Board and the Community
     Council, both of which will help to decide the right course for
     OpenStack. There are also several Project Teams and Team Leaders,
     who may be able to help you figure out which direction will be
     most acceptable. If you really want to go a different way, then
     we encourage you to make a derivative distribution available so that the community can try out your
     changes and ideas for itself and contribute to the discussion.

     When you are unsure, ask for help. Nobody knows
     everything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the OpenStack
     community. Asking questions avoids
     many problems down the road, and so questions are
     encouraged. Those who are asked should be responsive and
     helpful. However, when asking a question, care must be taken to
     do so in an appropriate forum. Off-topic questions detract from
     productive discussion.

     Step down considerately. Developers on every project come
     and go and OpenStack is no different. When you leave or disengage
     from the project, in whole or in part, we ask that you do so in
     a way that minimizes disruption to the project. This means you
     should tell people you are leaving and take the proper steps to
     ensure that others can pick up where you leave off.

Our code of conduct is adapted from the Ubuntu code of conduct which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. This adaptation means that this code of conduct is also licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.