manual/Contributing.md

Contributing

I (Andrew Belt) generally do not accept unpaid contributions to the Rack codebase itself.

Writing code is easy. Instead, the difficulty of changing Rack's source code involves

• research to devise the best solution with a convincing argument
• acceptance of API/ABI change proposals
• testing on relevant platforms, hardware devices, plugins, etc.
• dedication to maintain the code in the future
• generalizability to solve similar issues, and flexibility for solving future solutions without an entire rewrite
• sometimes legal review

Unpaid contributions typically omit many of the above tasks, making the code more expensive for me to accept than if I had written it myself.

Instead, there are many other areas where contributions are much appreciated.

• Dependencies of Rack. Especially nanovg‘s performance, rtaudio/rtmidi‘s stability and compatibility, and maybe even touch support in GLFW. You would be helping many more projects than just Rack.
• Your own Rack plugin
• Maintaining the Rack plugin ecosystem by curating, updating, and reviewing plugins
• Edits to the VCV Rack manual.

I will consider your contribution to Rack if you first open a GitHub issue with a detailed design proposal, which may create an open discussion before the change is implemented. By submitting code through a pull request, you agree to assign the copyright of your code to Andrew Belt to be licensed under the BSD-3-Clause (see Licenses).