Contributing to DSpace Software

Ways To Contribute and Participate

You do not have to just contribute code! There are other ways you can contribute:

Platforms for Contribution and Participation

How To Contribute Ideas or Suggest New Features

We always welcome new ideas or suggestions for new features. However, there are a few things to keep in mind which may increase the chances of your feature making it into DSpace!

1. Make Your Request Known to DSpace Developers

You should submit your idea or feature request to our Issue Tracking System (JIRA) (uses the same login as the Wiki). However, before going through the process of submitting your ideas, it's always best to search the Issue Tracker to see if others have already requested this feature. If someone else has requested this feature, you can add your ideas as "comments", or "vote" for that issue to be fixed.

If this feature hasn't been requested by anyone else, submit a request! (Don't worry, if it ends up being a duplicate request, we'll let you know). Your request will enter the "queue", where it will get a thorough review.

A few things to keep in mind when providing a request:

  1. Always provide us with as many details as you can. A paragraph description is good, but a few paragraphs with some sample use cases is even better. A single sentence description is often very hard to work with, and we may need to ask you for more information before we understand what you are asking for.
  2. If you have use cases, or local needs, describe them to us. Use cases really help developers understand why this feature is important, and use cases may also help us locate other institutions with similar needs (who may be willing to help us develop this feature).
  3. Expect that we probably will need to ask you a few questions. Even with detailed descriptions/use cases, chances are we'll need to follow up with you later for a few more details, or to make sure we understand exactly what you are asking for. So, please be willing to respond to questions or requests for additional details. Anytime someone comments on your newly created issue, you will receive an email from the Issue Tracker system.

2. Advertise your Request to Others & Help Us find a Volunteer Developer or Two

All of our DSpace Developers/Committers are volunteers. Let's repeat that: All of our DSpace Developers/Committers are volunteers. What this means is the core DSpace Development Team don't always have control over how much time they can spend on developing new features for DSpace. In many cases, the Committers can only work on new features which are of interest to their local institution/university.

This means that, even if we may want to develop a new feature, oftentimes, we need to first find an institution that is willing to provide developer time towards that feature.

You may be able to help us expedite this process! Here's what you can do to help:

3. Respond to the Formal Review of your Request (as necessary)

Each Feature Request is guaranteed to get a formal review by at least one of two groups (possibly both):

  1. The DSpace Committers - They review every feature request or bug report that comes into the system, often in weekly Developer Meetings. Note: Because of occasional backlogs, it is sometimes possible there may be a delay of several months before your request will get a formal review.
  2. The DSpace Community Advisory Team - They review and request additional feedback about any new feature request. This is a team of Repository Managers (or similar) who provide additional feedback to the Committers on new features.

After a formal review, a comment will be added to your request (it will also generate an email to you). This comment will detail the results of the initial review, along with any questions that came up. If you have time, please respond to these questions, or encourage others to do so. These questions are often asked to help us determine more about the request, so that we can ensure we have a common understanding.

4. Keep in Touch about the Request

Let us know if you need updates on the Feature Request's status. Just add a comment to your issue, requesting the latest status, and we'll try to get back to you as soon as we can.

There are many different reasons why a Feature Request may not have had any recent activity:

  1. We may have a backlog of requests, and just haven't gotten to a formal review yet.
  2. We may need to find a developer (or committer) who has time to develop this feature. In these cases, if we can locate other institutions who may be interested, that can often help in the search for a volunteer developer.
  3. We may be waiting for the answer to one or more questions posed in earlier comments. If we need more clarification, we can let you know.
  4. We may be currently performing a "Code Review" on any submitted code, to ensure it is safe & stable enough to release in DSpace. For more information on our DSpace Code Approval Processes, see ContributionGuidelines
  5. It's also possible that there are one or more developer(s) actively working on the feature, but that the work is not yet in a "completed" state.

5. Once your Request is Accepted into DSpace

If your request is formally accepted into DSpace, you'll receive an email as soon as we "Close" or "Resolve" the request in our Issue Tracker. At that point in time, the Issue Tracker will also be updated to state which version of DSpace this new feature will be released in.

Once that version of DSpace is released, your name (and a link back to your initial feature request) will appear in our Version History section of our DSpace Documentation. You will also be added to our list of all known DSpaceContributors. This is our way of ensuring you receive recognition for your contributions to DSpace!

How To Contribute Code

For more information on our DSpace Code Approval/Acceptance process (i.e. how to get your code accepted in DSpace), please see our ContributionGuidelines.

The overriding mantra is share early, share often. Here are a few things to consider:

Submitting a Patch

See ContributionGuidelines for guidelines that all submissions must adhere to. That page also describes the general process for how a patch/contribution gets accepted into DSpace. The mechanics of creating a patch file are described in Guide to Developing with DSpace.

Copyright and Licensing of Code Contributions

In the words of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, which also uses the BSD license, "The simplest explanation of the licensing terms is that you can do whatever you want with the product and source code as long as you don't claim you wrote it or sue us." The BSD License under which DSpace is made available does not require you to make your changes public or open-source. It does allow for proprietary commercial use, and for DSpace-derived creations to be incorporated into proprietary commercial products. Works based on DSpace may even be released under a proprietary license (but still must maintain the license requirements).

You are encouraged, but not obligated, to share your contributions with the DSpace community. If you choose to do so, you will need to sign over copyright and intellectual property rights of your code to DuraSpace, to be distributed via the BSD license. DuraSpace is a 501c(3) non-profit established to be the legal guardian of the code and to remain mission centric on providing free and open source software for management and archiving of digital works. Also, your code cannot rely on any non-BSD compatibly licensed code.

The BSD license means there is no advantage to be gained by your university (or anyone) retaining copyright, and that by having different copyright holders of different sections of the code, we will be rendered inflexible regarding copyright and licensing in the future, we do ask that you transfer copyright of your modifications to DuraSpace.

You will receive full acknowledgment for contributing the code; so we do encourage you to incorporate your enhancements to DSpace's functionality for everyone to benefit. You will also see benefits since you will neither have to re-incorporate the changes with new versions of DSpace, nor maintain this code solely yourself!