The maintainers of this Copyleft Guide project encourage contribution from

the community.  Part of the impetus for this project was to create a

community around a "copyleft codebase" for information about copyleft.  In

other words, this project is a tutorial project about Copyleft that is like a

Free Software project.

## Who Is In Charge?

Currently, [Bradley M. Kuhn](http://ebb.org/bkuhn/) is the editor-in-chief of

this Guide project.  However, many other contributors have given patches and

improvements to the text.  Review the

for more details on who has contributed to the project.

## How Do I Get Involved?

The Guide is maintained in a copylefted distributed version control system called

See the section "Merge Request and Patch Workflow" below for more information

on the details of doing that.

However, lack of Git and/or LaTeX knowledge is *not a barrier* for

contribution to this project.  Useful contributions will be accepted by the

following means as well:

  * Patches posted to

    [the mailing list](http://lists.copyleft.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss).

  * New sections of text or simply ideas and input emailed to

    [the mailing list](http://lists.copyleft.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss).

   stating the reasons why you believe the work is licensed under CC-BY-SA.

   If the original published work has a canonical hyperlink for the work,

   include that as well in the commit message.

   Finally, include any comments or reasoning why the text is appropriate for

   the Guide (and/or, why some text from the original material is not

   included because those parts aren't appropriate for the Guide).

   This procedure creates a "commit point" that shows the specific text

   brought from the other source — more-or-less as it stood in the

   other work.  This is useful for historical archiving purposes.

   contains an example of this specific procedure.

2. In a second commit, by itself, add the following two things only:

      * Update the copyright notices found in

        [comprehensive-gpl-guide.tex](comprehensive-gpl-guide.tex).  Ensure

        that the LaTeX formatting is correct.

      * Add an entry in

        [third-party-citations.tex](third-party-citations.tex) with a link to

        the work.  Mimic the formatting of existing '\item' entries on the

        list already in that file.

   immediately surrounding your pastes to ensure the text reads a unified

   whole.  Commit changes as necessary, in the smallest increments reasonably

   possible.

4. Carefully vet the text for locations where the positions contradict or

   otherwise aren't fully congruent with the existing material in the Guide.

   Ideally, all copyleft advocates would agree on all points, but they don't.

   Therefore, the Guide should note the major differences in opinion in the

   actual text, and include footnotes for any notable minority opinions.

   Commit changes as necessary, in the smallest increments reasonably

   possible.

   is an example of the process for the last two steps.

5. Submit a merge request for your branch into 'next'.  In this particular

   situation, it's particularly helpful to make a formal merge request on

   Gitorious rather than emailing a patch set.

## Merge Request and Patch Workflow

Currently, the main location for work on this project is

development on the project happens on the

(which is

[auto-published on the copyleft.org/guide-next URL](https://copyleft.org/guide-next/)).

Here is a suggested workflow for submitting patches — first doing so

*with* the Gitorious infrastructure, second *avoiding* the Gitorious

infrastructure but still using Git, and third avoiding Git altogether.

Merge requests and/or patches against

typically much preferred, and the workflow explanations below assume that.

However, merge requests and/or patches against

are not necessarily rejected.  In fact, if your change is a fix for typo,

spelling, grammar, formatting or anything urgent, submitting a patch against

'master' may make more sense.

To use the instructions below for proposals against the 'master' branch, just

replace 'next' everywhere below with 'master'.

First-time contributors may want to do the following four items first:

    Instead of the default, you might call your clone

2. On the command line create a *local* clone of your Clone, by typing:

    (The last part isn't strictly necessary; you just might want to name the

    upstream repository a more descriptive name, since below you'll add the

    official repository as well).

3. Now, add to your clone a copy of the "real" copyleft.org tutorial

   repository, and make a branch that tracks the official version:

That completes the first-time setup.  Next is a workflow each proposed merge

request.

0. First, ensure the Git repository points at the right branch and all old

   changes are committed.

        $ git status

   The output of the last command should look like this:

        # On branch SOME_BRANCH

        nothing to commit (working directory clean)

   If you don't get that output, you probably have uncommitted changes from

   some other situation, which is beyond the scope of this document.

1. Now, get the most recent version of the 'next' branch:

        $ git checkout master

        $ git branch -D official-next

        $ git checkout official-next

        $ git pull

   (This step is more complicated than is typically found in a tutorial like

   this.  Experienced Git users will note the above is the easiest way to

   handle the fact that the 'next' branch is occasionally rebased against

   master.  If 'next' branch has not been rebased since the last time the

   operation was performed, the last two commands suffice for this step.)

1. Next, create a new branch to hold your changes:

        $ git checkout -b my-new-idea-for-tutorial official-next

   Write useful and clear commit messages that explain the purpose of the

   changes.

3. When you are done all the changes related to 'my-new-idea-for-tutorial',

   verify they've all been committed this way:

        $ git status

        # On branch my-new-idea-for-tutorial

        nothing to commit (working directory clean)

4. Next, upload and publish those ideas to your own clone on Gitorious.

    That's the end of the command-line part.

   Initiate your merge request with by setting:

        Description:            More completely describe your proposal

6. While it's possible to discuss the details of the merge request via the

   web interface, for larger changes, it may be worthwhile to start a thread

   on

   [the mailing list](http://lists.copyleft.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss)

   about the merge request.  Include the URL of the merge request in the

   post.