//
//  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
//  contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
//  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
//  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
//  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
//  the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
//
//      https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
//
//  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
//  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
//  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
//  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
//  limitations under the License.
//


= Getting in Contact

There is no single "support address" for Apache PLC4X - where to ask depends on what you want to
do. Everything below is public and archived, with the one exception noted under
<<_private_plc4x_apache_org,private@>>.

== Mailing Lists

The mailing lists are the official channels of the project.
Anything that has to be on the record - decisions, releases, votes - happens on `dev@`, because
that is the only place the whole community can follow along and the archives are permanent.

To subscribe to a list, send an empty mail to `<list>-subscribe@plc4x.apache.org` and reply to the
confirmation you get back; to leave one again, use `<list>-unsubscribe@plc4x.apache.org`.
You do not have to be subscribed to read a list - all of them are archived at
https://lists.apache.org/[lists.apache.org].

[IMPORTANT]
====
Posting without being subscribed works, but please subscribe first if you intend to take part in a
discussion at all.

* *Every* mail from a non-subscriber has to be approved by a moderator by hand - not just the
first one. That is work for a small number of volunteers, every single time, so treat it as the
exceptional path rather than the normal way to write to a list.
* You will not receive any replies. Answers go to the list, and the list only delivers to its
subscribers, so you would have to go and look your own thread up on
https://lists.apache.org/[lists.apache.org] to find out whether anybody answered.
====

[cols="1,3"]
|===
|List |What it is for

|dev@plc4x.apache.org
|The development list. All official discussions happen here: design questions, release votes,
proposals and anything else that needs a decision. If you are unsure where something belongs, it
belongs here.

|issues@plc4x.apache.org
|Where the traffic from GitHub Issues goes. Subscribe if you want to follow what is being reported
without watching the repository on GitHub.

|commits@plc4x.apache.org
|Where commits and pull-request related posts go. This is a firehose - useful if you want to see
every change as it lands.

|[[_private_plc4x_apache_org]]private@plc4x.apache.org
|*Not a public list.* Only PMC members and members of the foundation can post to or read it. It is
used for the few things that cannot be discussed in public, such as personnel matters and security
reports before they are disclosed.
|===

=== If your mails do not seem to arrive

A mailing list forwards your message on to every subscriber, which means the mail that reaches them
was sent by the list rather than directly by you. Mail providers with strict security settings -
Proton is one example - tell the rest of the world to treat anything not sent directly by them as
suspicious, and the receiving mail services then apply that to the forwarded copy: it can end up in
somebody's spam folder or be quarantined before they ever see it.

The confusing part is that from your side everything looks fine. Your mail is accepted, it shows up
in the archives on https://lists.apache.org/[lists.apache.org], and yet some subscribers never got
it and nobody answers.

If that happens to you, the archive is the thing to check first: if your message is there, it
reached the list and the problem is on the delivery side rather than something you did wrong.

[TIP]
====
If you have an Apache account - which you do if you are a committer on at least one Apache project -
sign in at https://lists.apache.org/[lists.apache.org] and write your mail from there.
It is then sent by the foundation's own infrastructure instead of being forwarded on from your
provider, so it is guaranteed to reach every subscriber.

Without an Apache account, sending from a different address is the usual way around it.
====

NOTE: We are aware of this and are working on a solution.

== Slack

We have a `#plc4x` channel on the Apache Slack instance, which is a good place for quick questions
that do not warrant a mail to `dev@`.

If you are a committer on at least one Apache project you can sign yourself up at
https://s.apache.org/slack-invite[s.apache.org/slack-invite] using your `@apache.org` address.
If you are not, ask one of the active PMC members of the project for an invite.

IMPORTANT: Slack is convenient, but it is not the record. Anything that needs a decision has to
make its way to `dev@` - see the note about official discussions above.

== GitHub

The project uses GitHub for everything that is code:

* https://github.com/apache/plc4x/discussions[GitHub Discussions] for questions and open-ended
conversations that do not fit a mailing list thread.
* https://github.com/apache/plc4x/issues[GitHub Issues] for reporting bugs and requesting features.
See xref:issues.adoc[] for more on the issue tracker.
* https://github.com/apache/plc4x/pulls[Pull Requests] for contributing changes.
The xref:developers:contributing.adoc[contribution guide] describes how to prepare one.

== Reporting a security issue

Security problems must *not* be reported through GitHub Issues or any of the public lists.
Please follow the process described on the xref:security.adoc[security] page instead.
