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GSA / opensource-framework

Open Source Framework for GSA - use this framework as a reference when open sourcing your code base
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Encourage CC0 for non-governmental works #5

Open stvnrlly opened 9 years ago

stvnrlly commented 9 years ago

The framework includes the following:

Project documentation for works that are not of the United States Government should unambiguously declare the license under which the project is distributed (e.g, General Public License (GPL), MIT License (MIT)) and that any code publicly posted in association with the project (e.g., pull requests, code comments) must be licensed under the same terms. The most common license are GNU and MIT opensource.org.

As an initial matter, it's unclear whether this is referring to works by government contractors or open-source projects that are used by the government. If it's the latter, than the framework should clarify that and include an additional discussion of work by government contractors.

If it's the former, this documentation requirement is a good one, and suggesting an open-source license like GPL or MIT for non-governmental works is even better. However, CC0 is not limited to governments and could also be applied by government contractors. As such development would be funded by the government, it would make sense (and provide consistency) to release it to the public domain in the same manner as "official" government works.

pammiller0 commented 9 years ago

@stvnrlly thanks for pointing that out that distinction. Yes we are referring to works by government contractors and not tools and projects used by the government. I will update this to make it more clear.

konklone commented 9 years ago

I'll add that requiring contractors to use CC0, rather than GPL or MIT, would meet the spirit of the law (of US government works being public domain) much more effectively. This is what 18F does in its open source policy.

pammiller0 commented 9 years ago

We should be putting this into our procurements as a requirement too.