Guiding Principles

[kbuffardi]

From website to FOSS web product

The initial MVP implemented a website, only intended to launch support for a specific food pantry.

We are transitioning to consider this project as a FOSS project first and foremost. It is still intended to manage a single food pantry, but anyone who runs a food pantry should be able to use PantryNode to manage their local pantry by installing (and customizing) it on their own server.

Accordingly, we need to keep in mind:

• All setup needs to be well-documented with instructions in README.md file(s) and issues/discussions explaining how to adopt it
• Commits, instructions, discussions, etc. should be as general as possible. You may be a student in a class contributing to the project, but the product will be used by a wide variety of people in different settings so references to your particular situation (e.g. "Final commit for the semester") wouldn't make sense out of context. As best as we can, describe things in general, broad contexts
• As a FOSS project, we need to be mindful of licensing. Particularly, we need to avoid copyrighted images and other assets whenever possible. We also need to make sure that even open source dependencies we use are compatible with our MIT License

Other questions about general intentions and principles of the project? Ask here.