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Contributing to FINOS

There are several ways you can contribute to our existing projects and SIGs, and FINOS Members can propose new projects for contribution. Take a look at the diagram below for an overall picture of how contributions flow into FINOS:

FINOS Contribution Process

Contribution of use cases and ideas to a Special Interest Group (SIG)​

If you are looking to contribute a use case, take a look at our special interest groups which are meant to be arenas for like minded professionals to identify common challenges, pain points and opportunities to be solved collaboratively in the open.

Contribution of code / issues / documentation to an existing FINOS project​

The easiest way to engage is to contribute code, documentation, test cases, requirements, issues and pull requests, etc. to projects that are currently within the Foundation.

Before contributing to a project, community members are encouraged to familiarize themselves with a project by doing any or all of the following:

NOTE: Forms of contribution that require a contributor to make git commits, and in turn, request those to be merged via pull requests, must comply with the Contribution Compliance Requirements in place within FINOS.

Contribution of an existing code base into FINOS as a new project​

Are you a FINOS member and you have an existing project, either already open source or proprietary, that would be a good fit within the FINOS community? Or do you want to form a Special Interest Group to discuss a specific topic? Here's how to propose a new contribution.

Pre-Work: Contribution Fitness​

First off, you want to evaluate whether the contribution is suitable for a Foundation-hosted open source project, in terms of long term expectations and desire to build a diverse Community of adopters and contributors. Every Project contributed to the Foundation can come into an Incubating stage, which sets out a comprehensive set of criteria to review to evaluate contribution fitness is the Incubation checklist.

Contributors are encouraged to evaluate the checklist and ensure they are willing to achieve those criteria before, during and after contribution. If the project is not mature enough to be contributed to FINOS, but the project could still could use a neutral space to collaborate, contributors are encouraged to propose the project to be created in FINOS Labs.

OPTIONAL: FINOS Members can carry out a pre-incubation so called Formation stage, where the FINOS team and Members can support the contributor to socialize, gauge interest and ready the project for open sourcing, in a time-bound Member-only visible basis. If you want to explore a formation stage, please reach out to FINOS Member Success.

Step 1: Submit a contribution proposal​

Draft a proposal to be reviewed by the FINOS team. Please use the available templates for:

This will create a new issue on the FINOS Community Repository and kick off the process. The proposal is meant to cover the following:

  1. Business problem: the business problem that the proposed contribution solves.
  2. Proposed solution: how the proposed contribution solves that business problem. For software projects, include a detailed description of the software and its functionality.
  3. Tentative roadmap: a description of the short and medium term goals and phases of the project, and what success looks like for this project
  4. Current state: a summary of the contribution's history and status. Include information about the contribution's maturity and roadmap.
  5. Existing materials: links to and descriptions of any existing project materials (e.g. GitHub repositories). If any materials are currently private, please describe them in detail. The FINOS team will reach out to request access to private materials in order to evaluate them.
  6. Development team: current contributors, including full name, affiliation, work email address, and GitHub.com username where available.
  7. Contributor commitment: describe the resources you'll commit to supporting the contribution should it be accepted by the Foundation. This might include developer time (in FTEs), marketing support, Foundation membership, etc.

To maximize the chances of being accepted, you are warmly encouraged to provide evidence in your submission of the requirements listed in the Incubation checklist

TIP: To review previous contribution proposals (to see examples, or to see if someone has contributed something similar, etc) you can search our Github contribution issues history.

Step 2: Socialization​

Once the issue is raised, maintainers should email directly the community@finos.org (subscribe here) and TOC to outline your contribution idea and link to the previously created contribution issue). A simple note pointing to the Github contribution issue and encouraging the FINOS Community and Members to post their support / feedback on the issue will go a long way here.

Below a template provided for you as a starting point to socialize your proposed contribution.

Subject: New project submitted for incubation: <insert Project Name> - we need your feedback!
 
Body:
 
Dear FINOS Community,
 
I am excited to announce that we have just submitted the contribution of <insert Project Name> <insert project github URL if already open source>. You can find all the details of the contribution at <insert github contribution issue URL>. 
 
<insert brief project description and example use cases>

As the TOC gears up to review the contribution we would love to see your feedback and questions on the issue to express your interest in adopting or even better contributing to the project. Even a thumbs up would would be very much appreciated. 

Also please don't hesitate to reach out to me at <insert mailing list / slack / email> if you have any questions.

Thanks in advance for your consideration!

<insert contributor name(s)>

Note: while everyone is welcome to contribute to existing projects, only FINOS Members can propose new projects. If you are not a Member this step is particularly important to identify a Member who could become a sponsor for your project, but being listed in the initial maintainers.

Step 3: Approval​

Once the FINOS team has validated the contribution proposal for completeness, the contribution must go through an approval phase, for alignment with the scope and objectives of the Foundation, viability, perceived interest within the FINOS community. Particularly:

  • Special Interest Groups and Open Standards, the Governing Board will review and approve the contributions either via an email vote or at the next avaialble meeting.
  • For software project contributions, the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) will review and approve the contributions.

Step 4: IP review & Transfer of Contributions​

Once a contribution is approved, the Foundation will perform an audit to ensure the contribution is consistent with the FINOS contribution compliance requirements. The main areas covered are:

Trademark​

  • If the chosen project name and existing logo are found to be risky choices from a trademark standpoint (e.g. they clash with existing marks), the project will be requested to select a new name that does not conflict with any existing marks
  • If the contributor holds a trademark or the project name has been previously used in the publid domain (therefore potentially granting the contributor common law trademark rights, the contributor will be requested to transfer the project trademark to the Linux Foundation by completing a contribution agreement. This will allow FINOS to neutrally steward the project consistently with our Trademark Guidelines.

Intellectual property​

The project will be required to:

Step 5: Transfer and Review of Contribution Materials​

Following successful IP and trademark compliance, the FINOS infrastructure team will work with the contributing organization to transfer existing code and other materials to the project's collaboration infrastructure (e.g. its GitHub repository, project web site, and/or wiki space) and set for permissions for the initial list of maintainers. This can happen by giving access to an existing DVCS repository to the FINOS team or sending the FINOS team an archive containing the code to be contributed. See Code Transfer options.

It's during this step as well that code validation and scanning of the code base with be performed, any build processes set up and configured, and the various components documented in the Project Tooling section configured and set up for the project, at which point the rest of the Foundation's infrastructure will be available to the project contributors moving forward to use to develop, test and release the project.

Step 5: Contribution Announcements​

Once the transfer and review is complete, it's time to announce the contribution and garner attention and additional contribution from our the FINOS community. In order to do so:

We encourage project leads to email announce@finos.org - see a couple of good examples or use the template below and don't be shy!

Subject: New Project announcement: <insert Project Name> now Open Source in FINOS
 
Body:
 
Dear FINOS Community,
 
I am excited to announce that <insert Project Name> was successfully contributed to FINOS and hosted at <insert Github URL>.
 
<insert brief project description and example use cases>
 
The most current release is <insert release version>, available for download at <insert download URL or dependency coordinates for different build systems>. Documentation is available at <insert doc site URL> and you can reach out to the project team at <insert email list, chat URL, etc>.
 
Your feedback, issues, and contributions are more than welcome. See <link to contribution information, e.g. CONTRIBUTING.md> for more information on how to contribute and here's a few area where we could use help <insert URL of issues tagged with "good first issue" or "help wanted">
 
Thanks to the FINOS Community for a warm welcome!
 
<insert contributor name(s)>

Besides the technical announcement on list, the FINOS team will recommend to coordinate marketing announcements including:

  • Blog posts to announce the contribution on finos.org/blog - you can contact our Marketing to propose an article
  • Social media announcements - you can reach out to marketing@finos.org to ask for our support in promoting the contribution
  • For substantial contributions, especially of those with multiple contributing orgs, FINOS may choose to support contribution announcement with a press release. Contact marketing@finos.org if you think a press release is warranted and copromotion from your organization.

Have questions?​

If you'd like help, don't hesitate to reach out by email to help@finos.org or ask the wider community with a note to community@finos.org.