Use ARL policy as a starting point for code.mil

[fulldecent]

Much of the discussion here to date has been around licensing. There are many other practical considerations about open sourcing.

I am interpreting the scope of this project to include everything DoD project managers need to open source a project. Therefore those practical considerations are in scope.

I am working on PR #92 to start a document for those items.

DDS employees are welcome to call me. I want to make sure I am taking this is a direction you approve. It will be very helpful for me to understand the nuances of what contributions you are likely to accept.

Work plan

• [x] Copy ARL policy to this repository on the gh-pages branch
  • [x] Note / cite that origin is ARL
  • [x] Update style as necessary (ARL uses title case for headings, I will use sentence case for headings as per https://standards.usa.gov/design-principles/)
• [x] Turn it into a SIMPLE web page that can be hosted at code.mil
  • [x] Use styling & templates per https://standards.usa.gov/page-templates/ from 18F
  • [x] Mention DRAFT/DISCUSSION status of the document
  • [x] Use Jekyll to convert markdown to html
• [x] Replace all mentions of Army Research Lab with DoD
• [x] Replace tone of document from "This is official ARL policy" to "DDS recommends you do this"
• [x] Offer DDS assistance to other DoD agencies in implementing these recommendations
• [x] Add links to other US Federal Government policies on publishing source code
  • ARL policy
  • https://code.gov/#/policy-guide/docs/overview/introduction
  • https://github.com/18F/open-source-policy
• [x] Update vague references to "DoD Legal" to be "your agency's legal department" and similar.
• [x] Change RFC 2119 wording "MUST", "SHOULD", ... (which is appropriate for policy) to "should" and other language that is appropriate for a recommendation
• [x] Check all links, footnote references and glossary entries
• [x] Reword any language that appears like Defense Digital Service is speaking on behalf of DoD, because they're not
• [x] Clearly describe the role of the Defense Digital Service in supporting the DoD in the summary
• [x] Include Defense Digital Service contact information and specific points of contact for this project

Acceptance plan

• [ ] DDS decides that PR #92 is good progress towards a draft and that this is what we should be focusing on
• [ ] DDS merges #92 into gh-pages branch (note: this will update code.mil, note: there are appropriate draft notice warnings on #92 to support this merge)

[ckaran]

@fulldecent We've worked on some of these issues already. Take a look at ARL's policy.

[fulldecent]

@ckaran ARL policy is great. Perhaps this can be made generic (s/ARL/DOD/) in a few places for the entire DoD audience and published at code.mil. I can help with this.

[ckaran]

@fulldecent Sounds good! Fork it and have at! That said, I'm not going to pull the changes into the master branch; the reason is that the policy you see is ARL's official policy; it is not a reflection of some other document. If I pull in requests to the master, then I've changed official policy, and I need the Director's approval to do so.

That said, I'm open to a long-standing branch that hosts what you want; if you fork it and make the changes, can you send me a pull request for some other sensibly named branch?

[shawoods]

@fulldecent We would be very interested in your thoughts about the practical implications for project managers. We'd welcome a PR for this repo with a document starting that discussion.

[ckaran]

@shawoods Take a look at ARL's stuff, and jump in where you want to. I expect that there will be significant work on the develop branch shortly.

[fulldecent]

I have also jumped in on the ARL repo.

@shawoods thanks for the invitation to make a starting point here. Here is what I will do:

My goal here is to take this project from planning phase towards the finish line.

[ckaran]

@fulldecent @shawoods Would you be willing to make a note that it was forked from ARL's policy? Citation count/fame is part of how ARL keeps its funding...

[fulldecent]

@ckaran of course, noted in project plan above

[fulldecent]

Please see pull request #92, this is a DECENT start of wholesale stealing ARL's brilliant policy and turning it into a recommendation on behalf of DDS for all of DoD.

This PR updates code.mil and it (implicitly) describes the scope of this (code.mil) project. Basically it is a rewrite.

If this PR is accepted I will recommend that master be deleted. Or you can move gh-pages to master and use GitHub options to set up GitHub Pages to use the master branch.

[ckaran]

Since all of this discussion may be a Federal Record, deleting master may not be a good idea; at the very least, move what you've got to a different branch that you keep around for posterity.

[fulldecent]

@ckaran This is addressed in an updated Acceptance Plan above

[ckaran]

@fulldecent Good, thank you!

[fulldecent]

I have made progress on #92 and implemented the work plan above.

We now have a candidate website to replace code.mil. You can test this website by accessing my pull request, running jekyll serve and viewing from your web browser. But it is basically the same as just reading the markdown files.

---

Dear DDS members @shawoods @BrandonBouier @tomberek @erincd @nickjs @reinastaley @spoon16 @ExoUNX, US government contributors @konklone LNL @IanLee1521 @shawnbot, and other contributors @crbinz @nschonni @rthbound,

Would you please help review this pull request. It's not perfect. But I want to know if you support this as a step forward for the code.mil experiment.

If DDS members support this, please let me know the minimum changes required for this to be accepted. Once accepted, we can close this issue and then focus all efforts together on moving forward from this new beginning.

[BrandonBouier]

@fulldecent Thanks for PR #92! We really appreciate your enthusiasm and contribution to Code.mil. We are super focused on finalizing CONTRIBUTING.md, FAQ.md, and README.md and then releasing a few of our software projects.

Just wanted to let you know it might be a little while before we tackle this PR in earnest. As far as developing a website that is definitely on our radar, but we have to do some more legwork with other folks int he government. We don’t want to discourage your efforts, but the website work might be jumping the gun a little as we’re still developing our design strategy and gathering information, in addition to finalizing this work and preparing code for release.

[fulldecent]

The "website" part is just one file, https://github.com/fulldecent/code.mil/blob/gh-pages-arl-rewrite/_layouts/page.html, that is lifted from 18F's template and it translates markdown to HTML. That's not the important part.

The important review is

• Does this project goal and other statements at https://github.com/fulldecent/code.mil/blob/gh-pages-arl-rewrite/index.md accurately portray DSS's goal and role in this project?
• Does ARL's policy, translated into a DSS recommendation at https://github.com/fulldecent/code.mil/blob/gh-pages-arl-rewrite/implementation-guide.md successfully implement the goals of CONTRIBUTING.md, FAQ.md and README.md you are working on?

[fulldecent]

92 is merged, closing this issue. Discussion continues at #126 which gets this code published to the world wide web.