All work of the Baseline Protocol initiative is maintained publicly on a github repo.
You don't need any special access to the repo to get involved and start contributing. Follow these steps to fork the repo and submit pull requests. Anyone with a Github ID can also create and edit their own Issues, participate in public meetings, and join the various communication and collaboration channels that the community maintains.
There are four ways to contribute:
Write code (Architecture, Spikes, Issues, Tasks)
Write specifications (Epics, Stories, Prioritizations, Use Cases)
Write content and communicate it to more potential contributors, developers and product owners, and other stakeholders -- Join the communications team on Slack
Help prioritize work and develop incentives to get it done by joining the General Assembly or becoming a Core Developer or TSC Member.
There is one other way to contribute, and it's the most important: use the work in the Baseline Protocol to improve your own offerings. The Baseline Protocol is not a product or platform..the product is YOUR product.
Here is the link to the Baseline Protocol code of conduct:
Technical contributors either are working on architecture or developing code...but even correcting the language of documentation counts as a technical contribution and qualifies you to vote in upcoming TSC elections.
As of October 1, 2021, the baseline community will organize work in a similar fashion to Ethereum's EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposal). These will be called BaseLine Improvement Proposals, or BLIPs for short, and they will be maintained here. YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO SUBMIT IDEAS to the BLIP repo, and we are well-organized to review and act on them in a timely fashion. You never know -- we might decide to raise a grant to pay for your idea to get executed. It's happened before. Try it out!
Technical tasks are written as Github Issues. Issues will be reviewed, lightly prioritized, and communicated as "hey, help out here!" messaging to the developer community every two weeks. The TSC will periodically review what Issues and communications best succeeded in attracting help.
An Issue should be constructed, in particular, with acceptance tests. All other elements of a good Issue should be known to any practicing developer.
Most Issues should be attached to an Epic (see below).
A good Task/Issue starts with a Verb: "Implement xyz."
Follow these steps when submitting a pull request:
Fork the repo into your GitHub account. Read more about forking a repo on Github here.
Create a new branch, based on the master branch, with a name that concisely describes what you’re working on (ex. add-mysql).
Ensure that your changes do not cause any existing tests to fail.
Submit a pull request against the master branch.
Good practice strongly favors committing work frequently and not loading up a long period of work in isolation. Be brave...let others see what you are working on, even if it isn't "ready."
Anyone can do a pull request and commit work to the community. In order for your work to be merged, you will need to sign the eCLA (entity contributor agreement) or iCLA (individual contributor agreement). Here are the details: https://www.oasis-open.org/resources/projects/cla/projects-entity-cla
The iCLA happens automatically when people submit a pull request, or they can access directly by going to https://cla-assistant.io/ethereum-oasis/baseline
Merging to Master requires review by THREE Core Developers. The TSC seeded the initial set of Core Developers. Now, any active Member can become a Core Developer. Core Developers may add more Core Developers by rough consensus, and the TSC may step in to resolve cases where this process fails.
The specifications work of the community can be done by anyone, both technical and non-technical contributors. The focus is on finding evidence for a requirement and articulating it in the form below. The General Assembly is the coordinating body for this work.
The Baseline Protocol initiative uses Zenhub to create and manage both specification work and active protocol requirements and prioritization. (Zenhub should be a tab in your Github interface if you are using the Chrome extension. There is also a web-app here.)
Zenhub enables Epics to nest, while Issues don't nest...not really. Therefore, the community will employ the practice of using Issues for engineering Tasks and Epics to contain high level topics, which may have nested within them a set of agile Epics, and in them a set of Stories, and even Stories may have other Stories nested in them. Engineering meets planning where a Story (in the form of a Zenhub Epic) is referenced by an Issue/Task. (This can work very well, but Zenhub's choice in calling Epics, Epics can cause confusion.
A Zenhub "Epic" used as a high-level container for a grouping of work should be in short topic form -- primarily nouns.
A Zenhub "Epic" used as a Story should almost always follow the form: "As X, I need Y so that I can Z." An acceptable variant is the "now I can" form (note the "so that" clause is preserved):
A Party's System Administrator can look up Counterparties in an OrgRegistry (a public phone book) and add them to a Workgroup, so that they can start Baselining Records and Workflows.
A Party's System Administrator can quickly and easily verify a Counterparty's identity found in the OrgRegistry, so that they can be confident in adding the Counterparty to a Workgroup.
A Party's System Administrator can use some or all of the Counterparties and Workflow Steps defined in one Workgroup in Workflow Steps created within another Workgroup, so that Workgroups don't become yet another kind of silo.
The active contributors and maintainers of the Baseline Protocol repo can be found on Github. (Note: many contributors work in clones extending the protocol for their products. These people don't necessarily show up in the Github contributors list.)
