Thanks for considering contributing to Ironclad, it means a lot.
There are several ways one can help the Ironclad project, from writing and correcting documentation to contributing source code. A great way to help Ironclad as well is sharing it with people that may find it interesting!
One can report issues at our project’s Codeberg.
If you are experiencing an issue with Ironclad as part of a distribution, like Gloire, we recommend you report it to the distribution, where developers can dig a bit and figure out whether it is an Ironclad issue at all. Issues with Gloire can be reported at the project’s Codeberg.
Finding something to contribute for a project as big as Ironclad can be a bit daunting, asking on official communities can be helpful as to find the best fit for your particular skillset.
Ironclad is ruled by several policies regarding communications, and AI use.
Due to Ironclad’s GPL licensing, we can only accept contributions to Ironclad that comply with the base license. That is, GPL code itself, or more permissive, GPL-compatible licenses like the MIT, or most BSD varieties. The licensing status of contributions should be clearly delineated by using license headers.
We do not require a CLA or anything of the sort for Ironclad, we instead require a DCO for any major contribution.
The DCO is a statement created by the Linux Foundation in 2004 that shifts the responsibility for the licensing from the project to the user, as to protect the project from license fraud or legal repercusions. Unlike a CLA, this makes no copyright transfer, and the developer keeps their copyright and legal ownership permanently. The text of the DCO is:
Developer’s Certificate of Origin 1.1
By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I have the right to submit it under the open source license indicated in the file; or
(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source license and I have the right under that license to submit that work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part by me, under the same open source license (unless I am permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated in the file; or
(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified it.
(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution are public and that a record of the contribution (including all personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with this project or the open source license(s) involved.
Our version management software, git, provides an easy and convenient way
to sign the DCO with the -s command-line switch.
Ironclad’s community channels feature some communication guidelines, and the channels to discuss code changes like Pull Requests (PRs) follow them, you can read more about these guidelines here.
Ironclad as a project requires that contributors certify their patch submissions are made in accordance with the rules of our DCO. To satisfy the DCO, the patch contributor has to fully understand the copyright and license status of content they are contributing to the project. With AI content generators, the copyright and license status of the output is ill-defined with no generally accepted, settled legal foundation.
The Ironclad project thus asks that contributors refrain from using AI content generators on patches intended to be submitted to the project when their dataset is not known. Examples of tools impacted by this policy includes GitHub’s CoPilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Meta’s Code Llama, and code/content generation agents which are built on top of such tools.