Please contribute! There is still a lot of work that needs to happen to make the ABIF specification ready to submit to an organization that deals with technical specifications. A list of items that need to be done can be found here:
- FIXME-link-to-bug-tracker
It was only in 2025 that Lark-based parser became useful for converting ABIF into "jabmod" (the JSON ABif MODel). It's not perfect, but it may one day replace the regex-based monstrosity that powers abiftool and awt. See issue FIXME in the abiftool bug tracker to learn more about that.
The "election-software" mailing list is a good place to stay up-to-date on the latest news associated with ABIF:
If you contribute, please make sure you agree to the licence (both for the software and for the specification). Links to both can be found here:
Below is a reverse-chronological log of changes to the ABIF contribution policy.
Added many links above.
Per the January 2022 newsletter, here's the licenses you need to agree to in order to do much of anything with the bits found in this repository:
- The Apache License 2.0 for software.
- The Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 for the specification.
One thing I'll add: we also need to consider the IETF's RFC 8179. Do not try to interject stealth patents into this specification.
Please agree to the license for this repository before contributing:
We need to solve a few things before accepting serious contributions:
- Copyright: what license will the reference implementation be under? Probably MIT, but there's at least a couple of scenarios where @robla could imagine Apache of even AGPL to be more appropriate.
- Copyright assignment: do we need this?
- Patent policy: do we need to make sure we aren't subject to stealth patenting of our work here?