zeromq

This page is all about how you can contribute to ØMQ. If you are only looking for information on how to download and run ØMQ, see the download page instead.

There are many ways how you can contribute to ØMQ. Even if you're not a programmer, you can help us with the documentation, or work on the design. For a start, we suggest you join the mailing list.

On the other hand, if you know how to program C++, you are certainly welcome to contribute code of all sorts.

Allowing us to incorporate your contributions

Even though ØMQ' source code is licensed to you under the LGPL, it's not enough to submit your patches under the LGPL. The Licensing FAQ will tell you more about how iMatix handles ØMQ licensing.

In any event, if you like to contribute anything that is subject to copyright (text, media, or code), iMatix must be legally certain they can redistribute the code you have contributed to their own customers who have purchased closed-source editions of ØMQ. In order to be able to accept your contribution, we must therefore ask you to submit your contribution under the MIT/X11 license. This is a liberal, wide-spread Open Source license that allows iMatix (and anyone else) to use your contribution in both open-source and closed-source projects. If you are an employee, then you must get approval from your employer to submit code to ØMQ.

The ØMQ development model

The source code of ØMQ resides in a public Git repository which is hosted on this site. Currently, only iMatix employees have write access to ensure that only reviewed and tested patches find their way to the repository. However, over time, we would like to extend the group of people with write access.

In addition to development builds, we also perform regular product releases based on a milestone plan. As we work hard to produce high quality software releases, it is important for all ØMQ contributors to respect these milestones.

How to submit a patch

If you have developed a patch for ØMQ which you think could be useful for others and fits within the product's architecture, then you should submit it for inclusion. Please send it to the developer mailing list and explicitly state that you are licensing the patch under the MIT/X11 license.

Please keep in mind that it might take some time to review your patch and integrate it. Also, please expect feedback from other developers on how to improve your patch and address potential issues. We can only incorporate your patch if it does not harm the product stability.

How to submit a mix of old and new code

If you wish to submit a work that is a mix of existing LGPL licensed code and new code, you can not publish the results under the MIT/X11 license and you must explicitly provide iMatix the right to relicense your code, using a copyright assignment and relicense.