The TYPO3 Code of Conduct

The TYPO3 project was founded by Kasper Skårhøj and has attracted many people to join the community ever since. The vision of our project is "Inspiring people to share". This motto is central to the way the TYPO3 community collaborates. Members of the TYPO3 community need to work together effectively, and this code of conduct lays down the "ground rules" for our cooperation.

Our motto perfectly captures the spirit of the sharing and cooperation that is at the heart of the open source movement. In the Free Software world, we collaborate freely on a volunteer basis to build software for everyone's benefit. We improve on the work of others, which we have been given freely, and then share our improvements on the same basis.

That collaboration depends on good relationships between developers. To this end, we've agreed on the following code of conduct to help define the ways that we think collaboration and cooperation should work.

This Code of Conduct covers your behaviour as a member of the TYPO3 Community, in any forum, mailing list, wiki, website, IRC channel, public meeting or private correspondence. The TYPO3 Association will arbitrate in any dispute over the conduct of a member of the community.

The TYPO3 community and its members treat one another with respect. Everyone can make a valuable contribution to the TYPO3 project. We may not always agree, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour 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 TYPO3 community to be respectful when dealing with other contributors as well as with people outside the TYPO3 project and users of TYPO3.

The TYPO3 project 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 TYPO3 maintainers, as well as with the upstream community that is interested in the work you do. Your work should be done transparently and patches from TYPO3 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.

Disagreements, both political and technical, happen all the time and the TYPO3 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 TYPO3 Association which will help to decide the right course for the TYPO3 project. 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 or alternative set of packages available using the TYPO3 Package Management framework, so that the community can try out your changes and ideas for itself and contribute to the discussion.

Nobody knows everything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the TYPO3 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, such as requests for help on a development mailing list, detract from productive discussion.

Developers on every project come and go and the TYPO3 project 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 minimises 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.

Mailing lists and web forums are an important part of the TYPO3 community platform. This code of conduct applies very much to your behaviour in those forums too. Please follow these guidelines in addition to the general code of conduct:

• Please use a valid email address to which direct responses can be made.
• Please avoid flamewars, trolling, personal attacks, and repetitive arguments. On matters of community governance, the TYPO3 Association can make a final decision.

The TYPO3 Code Of Conduct is based on the Ubuntu Code Of Conduct. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. You may reuse it for your own project, and modify it as you wish, just please allow others to use your modifications and give credit to the TYPO3 Project!