1 2 Contributed Modules in Perl Core 3 A Social Contract about Artistic Control 4 5What follows is a statement about artistic control, defined as the ability 6of authors of packages to guide the future of their code and maintain 7control over their work. It is a recognition that authors should have 8control over their work, and that it is a responsibility of the rest of 9the Perl community to ensure that they retain this control. It is an 10attempt to document the standards to which we, as Perl developers, intend 11to hold ourselves. It is an attempt to write down rough guidelines about 12the respect we owe each other as Perl developers. 13 14This statement is not a legal contract. This statement is not a legal 15document in any way, shape, or form. Perl is distributed under the GNU 16Public License and under the Artistic License; those are the precise legal 17terms. This statement isn't about the law or licenses. It's about 18community, mutual respect, trust, and good-faith cooperation. 19 20We recognize that the Perl core, defined as the software distributed with 21the heart of Perl itself, is a joint project on the part of all of us. 22From time to time, a script, module, or set of modules (hereafter referred 23to simply as a "module") will prove so widely useful and/or so integral to 24the correct functioning of Perl itself that it should be distributed with 25Perl core. This should never be done without the author's explicit 26consent, and a clear recognition on all parts that this means the module 27is being distributed under the same terms as Perl itself. A module author 28should realize that inclusion of a module into the Perl core will 29necessarily mean some loss of control over it, since changes may 30occasionally have to be made on short notice or for consistency with the 31rest of Perl. 32 33Once a module has been included in the Perl core, however, everyone 34involved in maintaining Perl should be aware that the module is still the 35property of the original author unless the original author explicitly 36gives up their ownership of it. In particular: 37 38 1) The version of the module in the core should still be considered the 39 work of the original author. All patches, bug reports, and so forth 40 should be fed back to them. Their development directions should be 41 respected whenever possible. 42 43 2) Patches may be applied by the pumpkin holder without the explicit 44 cooperation of the module author if and only if they are very minor, 45 time-critical in some fashion (such as urgent security fixes), or if 46 the module author cannot be reached. Those patches must still be 47 given back to the author when possible, and if the author decides on 48 an alternate fix in their version, that fix should be strongly 49 preferred unless there is a serious problem with it. Any changes not 50 endorsed by the author should be marked as such, and the contributor 51 of the change acknowledged. 52 53 3) The version of the module distributed with Perl should, whenever 54 possible, be the latest version of the module as distributed by the 55 author (the latest non-beta version in the case of public Perl 56 releases), although the pumpkin holder may hold off on upgrading the 57 version of the module distributed with Perl to the latest version 58 until the latest version has had sufficient testing. 59 60In other words, the author of a module should be considered to have final 61say on modifications to their module whenever possible (bearing in mind 62that it's expected that everyone involved will work together and arrive at 63reasonable compromises when there are disagreements). 64 65As a last resort, however: 66 67 4) If the author's vision of the future of their module is sufficiently 68 different from the vision of the pumpkin holder and perl5-porters as a 69 whole so as to cause serious problems for Perl, the pumpkin holder may 70 choose to formally fork the version of the module in the core from the 71 one maintained by the author. This should not be done lightly and 72 should *always* if at all possible be done only after direct input 73 from Larry. If this is done, it must then be made explicit in the 74 module as distributed with Perl core that it is a forked version and 75 that while it is based on the original author's work, it is no longer 76 maintained by them. This must be noted in both the documentation and 77 in the comments in the source of the module. 78 79Again, this should be a last resort only. Ideally, this should never 80happen, and every possible effort at cooperation and compromise should be 81made before doing this. If it does prove necessary to fork a module for 82the overall health of Perl, proper credit must be given to the original 83author in perpetuity and the decision should be constantly re-evaluated to 84see if a remerging of the two branches is possible down the road. 85 86In all dealings with contributed modules, everyone maintaining Perl should 87keep in mind that the code belongs to the original author, that they may 88not be on perl5-porters at any given time, and that a patch is not 89official unless it has been integrated into the author's copy of the 90module. To aid with this, and with points #1, #2, and #3 above, contact 91information for the authors of all contributed modules should be kept with 92the Perl distribution. 93 94Finally, the Perl community as a whole recognizes that respect for 95ownership of code, respect for artistic control, proper credit, and active 96effort to prevent unintentional code skew or communication gaps is vital 97to the health of the community and Perl itself. Members of a community 98should not normally have to resort to rules and laws to deal with each 99other, and this document, although it contains rules so as to be clear, is 100about an attitude and general approach. The first step in any dispute 101should be open communication, respect for opposing views, and an attempt 102at a compromise. In nearly every circumstance nothing more will be 103necessary, and certainly no more drastic measure should be used until 104every avenue of communication and discussion has failed. 105 106-- 107Version 1.2. By Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) and the perl5-porters. 108 109