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How To Contribute |
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This page explains several ways to contribute to the BlackBerry WebWorks Platform including: code contributions to the projects at GitHub (currently WebWorks and WebWorks-TabletOS), participations in Forums, Issues submissions to BB.com and to GitHub (WB & WBTO), and to this Wiki.
There are many ways to contribute depending on your specific interests, skill-sets and time availability. The only thing you need is a desire to help improve the platform. The contribution processes are intended to be lightweight and yet strong enough to protect the interests of the community and of Research In Motion.
Note - Several issues are still pending. Rather than waiting we are annotating them as PENDING and we will update this document as they are resolved.
The main discussion forum is BlackBerry WebWorks Contribution. The WebWorks team at RIM monitors this forum and we will endeavor to provide prompt responses, although we can't guarantee it in all cases. Legal terms are here.
RIM has a number of official blogs, most specially the DevBlog. Comments posted in the blogs are monitored by the Inside BlackBerry team and the respective authors; we will endeavor to provide prompt responses, although we can't guarantee it in all cases. Legal terms are here.
The official Issue Tracker for RIM's products is via this JIRA instance; you will need a Developer Zone account - see issuetracker page. There are multiple categories; the one for WebWorks is WEBAPI. As always, we encourage you to verify that your submission is not a duplicate. Legal terms are the standard BB terms.
PENDING - GitHub provides a simple Issue tracker; we still need to determine how and if we will be using those for WebWorks and WebWorks-TabletOS.
PENDING - We are still discussing the scope for the Wiki. One approach being considered is to tag some pages (like this one) as only controlled by the core team while the rest might have wider access.
Contributions are done under a Contribution Agreement to protect the interests of the community and of Research In Motion. The agreement is similar, and is based on, that used by the Apache Software Foundation (see CLAS@ASF); as in that case, there are two CA documents, the CCLA for corporations and the IICL for Individuals. In both cases, the general process is to print the document, read it, fill-it and sign it, then scan it and submit it to the email listed in the document (currently github@rim.com). Note that in some cases you will need to fill in and sign both a CCLA and IICL.
The IICL is the document to use if you are an individual contributing your own intellectual property (IP); a typical case for an IICL would be an independent developer. If you work for a corporation and have signed an employee agreement that covers the IP you create you may also need to get a representative of your company to fill-in and sign the CCLA. We cannot give you legal advice; if in doubt, check with your legal counsel.
Once we receive your signed documents, we will communicate with you using the email address you provide us and we will let you know if there are any issues with your submitted document. Once any such issues are addressed and are resolved we will let you know and we will record that acceptance in a public file.
PENDING - Location of the file recording accepted CAs.
PENDING - Acceptance of the CA documents does not guarantee acceptance of your contributions; that process is separate and is still to be determined. We expect to initially operate on an ad-hoc but transparent manner; later, as we gain more experience with the submissions, we will formalize and document the process.
PENDING - The process by which a community member graduates from having contributed code under a CA to being a commiter with direct access to the repositories is also pending.
A common class of code contributions are small bug fixes and small and localized additions to the functionality. These code changes are often provided in the context of a bug or a request for enhancement submitted through an Issue tracker. As indicated above, the JIRA instance at BB.com is covered by legal terms that allow RIM to incorporate the changes, but we encourage contributors to sign the CA for clarity. Also for clarity, we will require CAs for any substantial contributions.