As an open source software, OSTRICH becomes better when we all work together to support its development. OSTRICH is maintained and developed by a volunteer team across various academic, private, and governmental entities. If you find OSTRICH valuable, we hope that you help support the tool by making a contribution.

You don't have to be a coder to make a contribution. There are lots of items that OSTRICH could use help with that require no coding at all. Examples are, in no particular order:

• Improving documentation
• Expanding examples
• Writing and implementing build testing
• Website design and development
• Identifying issues/bugs
• Code maintenance
• Feature development

If you want to help but don't know where to start, reach out to the OSTRICH community. It can point you toward current issues that could benefit from how you're interested in participating.

Making a contribution

OSTRICH follows the standard Git process for managing development of both the core OSTRICH code and documentation. Please fork the repository and make a pull request with your feature. The feature will then be reviewed by the community to ensure it behaves as expected. It is strongly encouraged that prior to starting development of a feature, you open an issue. This will give the community an opportunity to comment on your feature and to determine if someone else is working on something similar.

Reviewers will comment on your request. It will be reviewed for coding style, comments, and technical accuracy. You should respond to any requested changes in your pull request and use the GitHub system for communicating with other developers. It is required that changes to the OSTRICH documentation be submitted simultaneously with code changes. This helps keep the code and documentation in agreement and makes sure that the community can benefit from your contribution.