Appendix A Welcome to the Runestone Community
The mission of Runestone Academy is simple: We want to democratize textbooks for the 21st century. There is a lot of meaning packed into that short sentence that I would be happy to unpack for you. Thank-you for your interest in Runestone and PreTeXt, and welcome! This appendix is meant to answer some questions you may have about how these open-source projects are organized, how you can get help, and how you can contribute back.
The first thing you should understand is that Runestone and PreTeXt started out as separate projects, but have been working together since late 2019. We realized that we can do more by combining forces than we could if we stayed independent. If you have a related project of your own, we hope you will have a similar sentiment.
Most instructors start out using Runestone Academy and one of the books we provide pretty much as is. As you get used to using Runestone and get comfortable with its ways and quirks you may find yourself wanting to add new questions to your course. After that you may find yourself wondering about how you might customize some of the courses content. Or you may find yourself wanted to add some functionality to the instructors interface. These are all great things and we welcome that evolution of your involvement. You should not feel like you have to be an expert author or coder to contribute. Its actually very enjoyable to see people continue their learning journey by helping develop the platform that helped them start!
