Proposed guidelines for community-donated infrastructure

["Chris Travers" <..hidden..>]

Hi;

For those of you on the public lists, this is designed to get public feedback.  We on the core team are likely to make a decision on whether to formally adopt such guidelines in part based on community feedback and (to a larger extent) what we feel is necessary for the project.  The purpose I am proposing this is to create an objective set of guidelines facilitating the development of additional community resources outside of the core infrastructure in part to prevent future misunderstandings.

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I:  Rationale

LedgerSMB is a community project and for this reason the community is our greatest resource.  Community members should feel free to provide information resources of any kind to the larger community and, where appropriate, the core project should support thee measures.  At the same time, these resources pose a number of potential problems for the the project if they are incorrectly represented.  For this reason, the core team will review projects for promotion based simply on the risks and benefits that they provide the projects in large part along the lines of the criteria below.  Note that the rules may be lessened in a number of cases, for example pages in existance before the adoption of these guidelines provided that the general concerns over representation have been adequately answered.

In particular, community resources should not represent themselves as official LedgerSMB resources.  They may represent themselves as resources donated and maintained by an individual, group, or company, or they may represent themselves as unofficial.

Following these guidelines will help us showcase our community, reduce the scope of problems as they occur on community pages, and provide greater exposure to those who donate their time and effort building resources outside the direct control of the project.

II:  Please Avoid:
* Representing the work as an official LedgerSMB resource.
  * Using a domain name which represents LedgerSMB core infrastructure (ledger-smb.org would not be ok, nor would 
ledgersmb.co.uk).
  * Copying current web site designs (please ask for our feedback on logo usage)
  * Suggesting in any other way that the resource in question is an official LedgerSMB resource. 

III:  Please do:
* Represent the work as your own
  * If this is a company donation, please say so.
  * Include the LedgerSMB pages in your company web site or domain (
ledgersmb.example.com would be OK)
  * Provide contact information on your site for users to reach you (not us!) if there are problems.
  * If applicable for your business, feel ree to leverage it for marketing/advertising potential.

Feedback?  Concerns?