| title | layout |
|---|---|
How To Contribute |
default |
This page explains several ways to contribute to the BlackBerry Open Source projects including: code contributions to the projects at GitHub, participations in Forums, Issues submissions to BlackBerry projects, 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 a project. The contribution processes are intended to be lightweight and yet strong enough to protect the interests of the community and of BlackBerry.
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 forums are at BlackBerry Developer Forums. The team at BlackBerry monitors the forums and we will endeavor to provide prompt responses, although we can't guarantee it in all cases. Legal terms are here.
BlackBerry 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 Trackers for BlackBerry open source projects are the GitHub "Issues" portion of each of the project repositories. You will require a GitHub account to file a bug or request a feature.
The official Issue Tracker for BlackBerry's products is via this JIRA instance; you will need to use your BlackBerry Id - see issuetracker page. There are multiple categories. As always, we encourage you to verify that your submission is not a duplicate. Legal terms are the standard BB terms.
The main wiki for all BlackBerry open source projects is located at blackberry.github.com.
Contributions are done under a Contribution Agreement to protect the interests of the community and of BlackBerry. 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 ICLA 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 BlackBerry 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.