Engagement
Fostering Respectful Participation in Open Source Communities
Discover ownCloud’s commitment to respectful participation, contributor enablement, clear licensing, and open governance. Join our inclusive open source community today!
Respectful Participation
We commit to fostering a welcoming, respectful, and inclusive environment in all community interactions. We abide by our Code of Conduct and expect the same from all contributors.
Disagreement is inevitable in open source. Our goal is not uniformity, but progress. We seek to understand before responding and prioritize collaboration over conflict.
We welcome all people, but not all behavior.
Contributor Enablement
We lower the barriers to contribution through clear documentation, curated “good-first-issues,” and responsive feedback on pull requests.
We consider contribution as more than just code. Contribution comes in many forms: documentation, guidance, teaching and mentoring, events, spreading the word, testing, design, and advocacy.
Our maintainers are not gatekeepers but enablers. We aim to build long-term relationships with contributors and grow them into reviewers, maintainers, and ambassadors.
Clear and Fair Licensing
All ownCloud open source components use OSI-approved licenses. We carefully select licenses to balance permissiveness, contributor protection, and compatibility with our values.
We do not use license ambiguity as a business lever. Our licensing choices are public, intentional, and consistently applied.
Open Governance
We aspire toward transparent governance models that balance direction with community input. While Kiteworks steers the roadmap, we actively listen to and rely on feedback from our community.
Our Governance Charter defines the roles, decision-making processes, and escalation paths that make this concrete. It includes the establishment of a Community Advisory Board, a published maintainer list per repository, and a public roadmap.
We welcome and empower the creation of special interest groups, working groups, and steering committees within the community as the ecosystem matures.
Frequently Asked Questions
Respectful participation means fostering a welcoming, inclusive environment in all interactions. The community abides by a Code of Conduct, expecting contributors to prioritize collaboration over conflict, understand before responding, and welcome all people while not tolerating inappropriate behavior.
The community lowers barriers to contribution through clear documentation, curated “good-first-issues,” and responsive feedback on pull requests. Contribution is recognized in many forms, including code, documentation, mentoring, testing, and advocacy, with maintainers acting as enablers to build long-term relationships with contributors.
All open source components use OSI-approved licenses, carefully selected to balance permissiveness, contributor protection, and alignment with community values. Licensing choices are public, intentional, and applied consistently without ambiguity as a business lever.
Open governance involves transparent models that balance direction from Kiteworks with community input. It includes a Governance Charter defining roles, decision-making processes, and escalation paths, along with a Community Advisory Board, public maintainer lists, and a public roadmap. The community also encourages the creation of special interest groups and steering committees as it matures.