aliasvault/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to AliasVault

Thanks for your interest in contributing to the AliasVault project! There are a lot of ways to help out.

Community Engagement

Become active in AliasVault's community, helping by:

• Answering questions in our Discord community
• Helping users with self-hosting setup and troubleshooting
• Reporting bugs and suggesting improvements
• Participating in discussions about features and improvements

Spreading the Word

Getting the word out about AliasVault is important so we can reach and help more people to improve their privacy. You can help by:

• Sharing on social media (X, Reddit, Mastodon, etc.)
• Writing blog posts about your AliasVault experience
• Creating video tutorials or walkthroughs
• Mentioning AliasVault in privacy/self-hosting discussions
• Telling friends and colleagues about the project

Contributing to the Documentation

The docs are built using Jekyll and automatically deploy to GitHub Pages via GitHub Actions. You can build the docs locally by running docker compose up in the ./docs folder.

The docs site is based on the open-source template called Just The Docs. Find more information about how this template works in the official docs.

To make changes to the AliasVault documentation please make a PR that directly edits the docs markdown files in this repository.

Contributing to the Main Codebase

Get in contact

If you’re planning to work on a new feature or improvement for AliasVault, we strongly encourage you to get in touch with us first. This ensures that your proposed changes align with the project's direction and increases the likelihood of your work being accepted into the official repository. You can reach us through:

• Opening an issue on GitHub to discuss your proposed changes
• Reaching out via Discord or email
• Contacting the maintainers directly

Set up your local development environment

You can find instructions on how to get your local development environment setup for the different parts of the AliasVault codebase here:

https://docs.aliasvault.net/misc/dev/

Tip: if the URL above is not available, the raw doc pages can also be found in the docs folder in this repository.

If you run into any issues, feel free to join our Discord to chat with the maintainers and author.

License and Contributions

AliasVault is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPLv3). By submitting code, documentation, or other contributions to this project, you agree that:

1. Your contribution will be licensed under the same AGPLv3 license as the project
2. You have the legal right to grant this license (e.g., you are the author, or have permission)
3. You understand that your contribution will be made public under the AGPLv3 terms
4. You are not expected to provide support or warranties for your contribution

✅ There is no Contributor License Agreement (CLA) required. We believe in a balanced open source model where all contributors are treated equally under the terms of the AGPLv3.

By opening a pull request, you agree to these terms. Your contributions will be published under the AGPLv3 license.