Sugar Labs/Legal/Code of Conduct

To be effective, the members of the Sugar Labs community must work together; our code of conduct lays down the "ground rules" for our cooperative efforts.

The Sugar Labs community supports the users, educators and software developers who use and develop the Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar is a learning environment for children to explore, learn, teach, and reflect. Sugar Labs is a community's project where we all can explore, learn, teach, and reflect. The same underlying principles that make Sugar great—discovery, collaboration, and reflection—are central to the way the Sugar community operates.

We chose the name Sugar Labs, plural, because we are more than one lab, one person, or one idea. Plurality captures the spirit of sharing, cooperation, and criticism that is at the heart of the free software/open-source movement. 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 (and end-users). We have agreed upon the following Code of Conduct as a guide to our collaboration and cooperation.

This Code of Conduct covers your behavior as a member of the Sugar Labs community, in any forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, code-sprint, public meeting, or private correspondence. The Oversight Board will arbitrate in any dispute over the conduct of a member of the community.

Be considerate

Your work will be used by other people, and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision you take will affect users and colleagues, and we expect you to take those consequences into account when making decisions. For example, when we are in a feature freeze, please don't upload dramatically new versions of critical system software, as other people will be testing the frozen system and not be expecting big changes.

Be respectful

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

Be collaborative

Sugar Labs 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 Sugar contributors, as well as with the entire Sugar ecosystem that is interested in the work you do. Your work should be done transparently and patches from Sugar 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.

Be flexible

The Sugar Labs community and its members come from various backgrounds and cultures. It is important to remember that Sugar Labs is a place for educators and developers; parents, teachers, and children; and speakers of many languages to work together. Try to find the appropriate forum for your topic, level or expertises, or language. If you come across a post that is in an incorrect forum, please respectfully redirect the poster to the appropriate. However, a project such as Sugar Labs requires communication between groups and languages.

When you disagree, consult others

The Sugar community is not immune to disagreements—both political and technical. We do not try to avoid disagreements or differing views, but we do try to resolve them constructively. Turn to the community and to community processes to seek advice and to mediate and resolve disagreements. Community resources include an Oversight Board which will help to decide the right course for Sugar Labs, project teams and team leaders who may be able to help you, and an ombudsman who will investigate complaints and, where possible, resolve them by making recommendations to the community. We welcome you to fork the Sugar code base if you are determined to go your own way; enabling the community to test your ideas and possibly merge them back into the mainstream.

When you are unsure, ask for help

Nobody knows everything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the Sugar 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.

Step down considerately

Developers on every project come and go and Sugar Labs 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 minimizes 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

This code of conduct applies very much to your behavior in mailing lists and web forums.

1. Please watch your language. The Sugar community is a family-friendly place.
2. Please use a valid email address to which direct responses can be made.
3. Please avoid flamewars, trolling, personal attacks, and repetitive arguments.

The Sugar Labs 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 re-use it for your own project, and modify it as you wish, just please allow others to use your modifications and give credit to the Ubuntu Project!

Spanish version

A Spanish version is available at http://co.sugarlabs.org/go/Código_de_Conducta

Version en Español

La version en español de este documento esta disponible en http://co.sugarlabs.org/go/Código_de_Conducta