A community effort
Millstone is an Open Source project, which means that it is open for contributions from others than the initial author, IT Mill Ltd.

The main channels used by the developers for communication and coordination of the effort are:

Feel free to join the effort - contributions are greatly appreciated.

Who are the Developers?

The initial author of Millstone is IT Mill Ltd, a Finnish company specialized in user interface technology. Millstone has Open Source development and license models, because:

  • It guarantees independence of suppliers for projects based on Millstone
  • LGPL assures that any problems found or new features developed are shared for the benefit of all Millstone users. This should result to better quality.
  • An open development model allows a very large number of developers to contribute. This hopefully leads to situation where Millstone develops at rapid pace.

The answer to the headline question is that anyone willing and with enough expertise can contribute. We hope that this means you. To guarantee quality and consistency, IT Mill Ltd continues to coordinate the effort.

Development Model

The development of the Millstone library takes place in public the CVS repository, where anyone can follow the development - almost in real time. Commits to CVS are restricted to core developers, as selected by the project manager.

The process of accepting contributions, new features, and bugfixes from developers outside the core developer group, is to send patches to Millstone bugzilla:

  1. Create, document and test your new feature or bugfix
  2. Check that the source code is well commented and follows Java coding conventions
  3. Create a patch against the target branch. Bugfixes might be created against latest stable version. New features should always be created against lastest from the CVS main trunk.
  4. Create a new bug report with type "feature request" or find an old bug report corresponding to your bugfix.
  5. Attach the patch to bug report

Millstone development is done on CVS main trunk, and the stable releases are maintained on separate branches. For more information on Millstone version numbering, see Millstone Version Numbering.

Submitting Bug Reports and Requesting New Features

If you are confident that you have found a bug in Millstone, please post a bug report! Millstone core development team tries to fix the reported bugs as soon as possible. Please follow the bug reporting instructions below:

Submit a Bug Report

New features for Millstone can be also requested by submitting bug report marked as "feature request". Be careful to describe your feature idea carefully in order to convince the developers that the feature is needed.

Note that IT Mill Ltd provides commercial services for creation of extensions and new features tailor made for your needs and schedule. For more information, see support page.

Submit Feature Requests

If wish to see a new feature in the next Millstone release, or if you have an idea of how to improve the existing ones, please send a feature request for it.

Submit a Feature Request