CiviCRM is built from the contributions of numerous people and organizations around the world. Our community is extremely diverse, with people from many different backgrounds, with many different motivations. These short and friendly guidelines aim to help people to get involved with our community, understand how we work together, and what we expect of each other. These guidelines may also be found at: https://civicrm.org/community-guidelines

Our Community Guidelines

Preamble

CiviCRM is built from the support, hard work, and enthusiasm of individuals and organizations around the world. Our community (“we”) is diverse, passionate, and dedicated to the overarching goal of doing good.

Our community guidelines support CiviCRM’s vision, offer guidance on how the CiviCRM community can effectively work together, and establish reasonable expectations for any member of the community to agree to and to follow. In conjunction with CiviCRM’s code of conduct, these community guidelines ensure that CiviCRM fosters a positive and welcoming atmosphere.

Openness

CiviCRM will always be freely available under an open source license with no associated license costs or ongoing fees, and no restrictions on the types of organizations that can use our software. By its open source nature, we, as individual community members, understand and accept that the ongoing operation and future success of CiviCRM as a project is entirely on us and that it is therefore incumbent upon us to find positive ways to interact and to collaborate.

In everything we do, we aspire to maintain transparency, to provide clarity, and to recognize that the complexities of the project require that we provide support and offer patience to all members of the community, be they newcomers or veterans, in order to facilitate understanding of CiviCRM and promote how we as a community work together.

Debate

We value courteous, lively discussion both online (in forums, chat rooms and so on) and offline (at conferences, meet-ups, sprints etc.), and will treat each other with respect. We recognize that we will lose community support for our priorities and objectives if we fail to treat community members with courtesy and with respect.

We appreciate honest feedback and constructive criticism, and recognize that open, honest conversation often involves more listening than being listened to. We understand that we speak for ourselves and not on behalf of 'CiviCRM', 'the community', 'users', 'partners', 'members' etc., unless we can demonstrate how we achieved this mandate.

At times, we recognize that debate may be taken negatively or offensively, or may in fact be made in such fashion. We understand that we should apologise when we do say things in a way that is offensive and we should always endeavor to reconcile disagreements. We understand that ongoing negativity, abusive tones and communications, and bullying cause individuals to be unwilling to express themselves or take part in the conversation, and are therefore unwelcome. Such instances may violate CiviCRM’s code of conduct.

Do-ocracy

We value those that contribute to the project and get things done. We all have different priorities and understand that those of others are valid just as are ours. We are all free to move the project forward in ways that make sense to each of us and that do not inhibit others’ use of and contributions to the software without asking for permission first. By doing so, we take responsibility for what we are willing to do or not do, and we understand that complaining about or arguing over what we feel others should or should not be doing is counter to our culture.

As members of a do-ocracy, we understand that expecting any other community member or the CiviCRM Core Team to spontaneously make our priorities happen is unreasonable and inconsistent with our culture. Any responsibility in our project can be carried by any contributor who demonstrates the required capacity and competence, and we encourage everyone to be a part of this culture.

Our roadmap is generated by our community and is determined by doers and funders that are able to commit the necessary resources to advance CiviCRM. While we welcome all opinions on the direction CiviCRM should be heading, its ongoing development is necessarily aligned with those individuals that take the initiative to make things happen.

Collaboration & Promotion

We collaborate routinely since this reduces redundancy and improves the quality of our work. Rather than ‘trying to do everything ourselves’, we align ourselves with complementary projects and organizations for mutual benefit, both inside and outside our community.

As community members, we understand that it is our responsibility to find people with similar priorities and attempt to combine resources in order to realize our objectives. Likewise, it is our responsibility as a community and as individuals to make engagement and collaboration as easily as possible to ensure success. Failure to do so in no way warrants blame on any individual or group of individuals.

As a community, we will endeavor to promote initiatives to raise awareness and encourage collaboration. Likewise, we will promote businesses and individuals that provide CiviCRM services and that contribute back to CiviCRM. We encourage all CiviCRM providers and users to structure their work and contributions in ways that benefit both their own businesses as well as the wider CiviCRM community.

The CiviCRM Core Team

The CiviCRM Core Team is focused on ensuring the maintenance and production of CiviCRM as a software product, and on stewarding the overall project. The Core Team manages releases, infrastructure, security and various aspects of development, facilitates the community, and carries out various administrative tasks.

Staffed by a small number of team members with varying time commitments to the project, the Core Team is intentionally lightweight, focusing on a narrow range of duties within the project, many of which require considerable time and resources but are also easily overlooked. Core Team members are paid by CiviCRM LLC, which generates income from the project, as well as may be compensated through work that individual members take on related to, or not, CiviCRM.

The Core Team is committed to maximizing its effectiveness for the good of the project, however its capacity is finite. It cannot fulfill everyone’s priorities nor will it attempt to do so. Like other members of the community, the Core Team will align itself with those that have the resources to make initiatives happen, specifically those initiatives that stand to have the broadest impact on CiviCRM users.