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contrib : clarify code origin guidelines #21165

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contrib : clarify code origin guidelines
ddh0 Mar 29, 2026
c27b0d3
fix typo
ddh0 Mar 29, 2026
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32 changes: 22 additions & 10 deletions CONTRIBUTING.md
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# Contributors
# CONTRIBUTION POLICY

## Contributors

The project differentiates between 3 levels of contributors:

- Contributors: people who have contributed before (no special privileges)
- Collaborators (Triage): people with significant contributions, who may be responsible for some parts of the code, and are expected to maintain and review contributions for the code they own
- Maintainers: responsible for reviewing and merging PRs, after approval from the code owners

# AI Usage Policy
## AI Usage Policy

> [!IMPORTANT]
> This project does **not** accept pull requests that are fully or predominantly AI-generated. AI tools may be utilized solely in an assistive capacity.
Expand All @@ -26,7 +28,7 @@ If AI is used to generate any portion of the code, contributors must adhere to t

For more info, please refer to the [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) file.

# Pull requests (for contributors & collaborators)
## Pull requests (for contributors & collaborators)

Before submitting your PR:
- Search for existing PRs to prevent duplicating efforts
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -54,7 +56,7 @@ After submitting your PR:
- If your PR becomes stale, rebase it on top of latest `master` to get maintainers attention
- Consider adding yourself to [CODEOWNERS](CODEOWNERS) to indicate your availability for fixing related issues and reviewing related PRs

# Pull requests (for maintainers)
## Pull requests (for maintainers)

- Squash-merge PRs
- Use the following format for the squashed commit title: `<module> : <commit title> (#<issue_number>)`. For example: `utils : fix typo in utils.py (#1234)`
Expand All @@ -68,7 +70,17 @@ Maintainers reserve the right to decline review or close pull requests for any r
- The pull request duplicates an existing one.
- The contributor fails to adhere to this contributing guide or the AI policy.

# Coding guidelines
## Code Origin Disclosure Policy

*Contributors* and *collaborators*, as defined above, must disclose the origin of their code, if they did not write it themselves, to avoid potential licensing conflicts or intellectual property right violations.

Contributions that can be shown to originate from one or more of the following sources, in whole or in part, will not be accepted:
- [ik_llama.cpp](https://github.com/ikawrakow/ik_llama.cpp)
- [Iwan Kawrakow](https://github.com/ikawrakow)

Note that maintainers reserve the right to reject code on the basis of its origin, even if not explicitly listed above.

## Coding guidelines

- Avoid adding third-party dependencies, extra files, extra headers, etc.
- Always consider cross-compatibility with other operating systems and architectures
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -97,7 +109,7 @@ Maintainers reserve the right to decline review or close pull requests for any r

![matmul](media/matmul.png)

# Naming guidelines
## Naming guidelines

- Use `snake_case` for function, variable and type names
- Naming usually optimizes for longest common prefix (see https://github.com/ggml-org/ggml/pull/302#discussion_r1243240963)
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -156,7 +168,7 @@ Maintainers reserve the right to decline review or close pull requests for any r

- _(TODO: abbreviations usage)_

# Preprocessor directives
## Preprocessor directives

- _(TODO: add guidelines with examples and apply them to the codebase)_

Expand All @@ -165,7 +177,7 @@ Maintainers reserve the right to decline review or close pull requests for any r
#endif // FOO
```

# Code maintenance
## Code maintenance

- Existing code should have designated collaborators and/or maintainers specified in the [CODEOWNERS](CODEOWNERS) file responsible for:
- Reviewing and merging related PRs
Expand All @@ -182,13 +194,13 @@ Maintainers reserve the right to decline review or close pull requests for any r

- For changes in server, please make sure to refer to the [server development documentation](./tools/server/README-dev.md)

# Documentation
## Documentation

- Documentation is a community effort
- When you need to look into the source code to figure out how to use an API consider adding a short summary to the header file for future reference
- When you notice incorrect or outdated documentation, please update it

# Resources
## Further resources

The Github issues, PRs and discussions contain a lot of information that can be useful to get familiar with the codebase. For convenience, some of the more important information is referenced from Github projects:

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