Contribute

Want to contribute code to Groupmuse? We'd love the help! We have contributors from many different cities on our web and mobile projects, and although we're not open source, we run a lot like an open source project.

How to get involved

The first place to go is our Pivotal Tracker, where we manage all product development (web and mobile apps). Check out what's going on, and see if anything looks interesting! Email Kyle at [email protected] introducing yourself! Let him know what you're interested in working on, either from Pivotal or new ideas of your own.

Once we add you to Pivotal Tracker and Github, our workflow is pretty simple:

• If you want to add something new to Pivotal, email it to [email protected].
• When you're ready to get coding, "Start" the task in Pivotal.
• Do all of your work on a well-named git branch.
• If you picked something from the Backlog, make sure you can finish by the coming Monday.
• If you picked something from the Icebox, finish up within two weeks.
• Submit a pull request on Github.
• "Deliver" the task in Pivotal (then we'll review and accept/reject, comments primarly on Github).

Never used Pivotal before? Check out there intro videos here.

Why isn't Groupmuse open source?

We considered this very seriously, but it gets tied up in our mission as a company. Basically, here's the deal: Groupmuse is a for-profit company. While we're pretty obviously not in it for the money, we do think that a for-profit company will be able to bring art and people together in a way that non-profits can't. One of the issues with donor-driven art institutions is that they tend to reflect the opinions and aesthetic choices of the elite few. We want to build a company that is beholden to the people for it's success. We want to build a product that people will pay for, so that we are always required to consider their interests above all else. And to make these things a reality, we need to be the only ones with the Groupmuse codebase (for now, at least).

TL;DR: We think it's important that we're a private company, and to be successful as a private company we need to own our code.

While we aren't going to have everyone sign an NDA, we will ask contributors to agree to some basic terms before sharing the Groupmuse codebase.