1 About This Document

This file contains guidelines and advice for someone who is the maintainer of a GNU program on behalf of the GNU Project. Everyone is entitled to change and redistribute GNU software; you need not pay attention to this file to get permission. But if you want to maintain a version for widespread distribution, we suggest you follow these guidelines; if you would like to be a GNU maintainer, then it is essential to follow these guidelines.

Please send corrections or suggestions for this document to maintainers@gnu.org. If you make a suggestion, please include a suggested new wording for it, to help us consider the suggestion efficiently. We prefer a context diff to the maintain.texi file, but if you don't have that file, you can make a context diff for some other version of this document, or propose it in any way that makes it clear.

This document uses the gender-neutral third-person pronouns “person”, “per”, “pers” and “perself” which were promoted, and perhaps invented, by Marge Piercy in Woman on the Edge of Time. They are used just like “she”, “her”, “hers” and “herself”, except that they apply equally to males and females. For example, “Person placed per new program under the GNU GPL, to let the public benefit from per work, and to enable per to feel person has done the right thing.”

The directory /gd/gnuorg is found on the GNU file server, currently fencepost.gnu.org; if you are the maintainer of a GNU package, you should have an account there. Contact accounts@gnu.org if you don't have one. (You can also ask for accounts for people who help you a large amount in working on the package.) /gd/gnuorg/maintain.tar.gz is a tar file containing all of these files in that directory which are mentioned in this file; it is updated daily.

This release of the GNU Maintenance Instructions was last updated March 22, 2006.