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 educators and software
developers who use and develop the Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar is a
place for children to explore, learn, teach, and reflect. Sugar Labs
is a place 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.

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!