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Helix Community Policies


Patch Submission Guidelines

It may be that while using the Helix DNA, you have ideas on how to improve it. Perhaps you have an idea for a performance enhancement on a certain platform, or you are working on porting the DNA to another platform and have minor changes to help it build in your environment.

Small changes like this can be contributed easily via patches, which will be reviewed by the Helix DNA developers and possibly incorporated into the Helix DNA itself. If you want to contribute such changes, review the patch submission guidelines and send them in.

Posting Guidelines for Mailing Lists

The Helix Community like most open source communities has a variety of public mailing lists for technical discussion of the Helix DNA source code and open to anyone to subscribe to. When someone sends an email message to the mailing list, a copy of that message is broadcast to everyone who is subscribed to that mailing list. Mailing lists provide a simple and effective communication mechanism for discussion and decision making.  If you plan to post messages or participate in mailing list discussions please first review the Helix Community posting guidelines.

Filing Bugs

Anybody -- developers, testers or end users -- should feel free to alert the Helix community of issues encountered with the Helix DNA, or ideas for ways to make the Helix DNA better for you. If you have run into something you would like to report, you can use the Bugs page to report issues encountered using the Helix DNA products. You can use the Bugzilla page to understand how the Bug Submission process works. For a quick guide on how to file a bug, take a look at "How to file a good bug?"

New Projects

You can create a proposal for extending the Helix platform, which, if approved, will also give you a workspace and assistance for adding in those capabilities. If this is of interest, read up on the Helix Community New Project Proposals.

CVS Access/Contributor Agreement

In order to get CVS access, you will need to sign the Contributor Agreement (PDF). This agreement allows major contributors the flexibility of having joint copyright assignment to their contributions.

Guidelines from the Webmaster

Project owners have a great deal of latitude in defining the website associated with their projects. However, we ask that project owners follow certain standards in creating new web pages and extending the Helix Community website, so that we can maintain the site on an ongoing basis. Read more on Web Content Standards for HelixCommunity.org to learn what is expected of project owners

All Is Negotiable

All of these policies are negotiable. If you think something needs changing, participate in the policy making process. A good mailing list to start off with is the open-discuss mailing list, where we discuss the overall operation of the Helix Community, including process improvements, website enhancements, and other ways of helping the community work together more efficiently. Other ways to participate are noted on the Helix Community Participation page.