Getting Involved in the CGAL Project

Starting from CGAL 3.0, CGAL is available under an Open Source License. More than switching the license, we open up the project and invite you to join. The CGAL project was founded by seven research institutes in 1996, and since, people at other institutions started developing software based on the design ideas of CGAL.

Organizational Issues

The developer community has its own mailing list. The majority of the members are from the institutes who started the project back in 1996, but little by little we integrate people from other institutions who develop CGAL like. The only way to get on this list is by invitation. The typical curriculum of a new member is to first be a CGAL user, to understand the design ideas, to start implementing like CGAL, to discuss on the users' mailing list, to get invited on the developer mailing list.

Submissions of new packages are handled similar to a submission to a scientific journal. The CGAL Editorial Board designates a primary reviewer who typically makes several iterations with the package author.

Technical Issues

The CGAL project lives a software development process. We review specifications of new packages, have one internal release per day, with a testsuite that is run on many different platforms. We have a subversion server and a bugtracking system in place, and we have two one-week developer meetings per year. Again, we only give access to these resources on invitation. The only exception is the developer's manual.

Legal Issues

As researcher you are probably free in the choice of your research topic. However, as soon as you distribute your software, the administration of your institution has a word to say. Therefore, we can only make your software part of the CGAL distribution, if you got an official statement from your institution. This is not a formal commitment to provide ressources in form of people, machines, meeting facilities, or to maintain the developed software, but at least a formal statement concerning the license. Note that this does not mean that you transfer any intellectual property rights.

Open Source Project Rules and Procedures

To help users and developers to understand the decision processes behind CGAL and how one can get involved, we have written and published the CGAL Open Source Project Rules and Procedures.