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Open source vendor ecosystem - contributing upstream #3

Open mgifford opened 3 years ago

mgifford commented 3 years ago

I think I just have higher expectations of what we should be striving for.

Governments use open source software and like any responsible user of open source software, govIT should be looking for ways to contribute upstream. This might be directed by staff or indirectly through the vendors and consultants who are used to develop it.

Contracts should be worded to explicitly ask for bugs, feature requests, patches and code reviews to be contributed back to the open source community that is being used. Furthermore, when choosing a vendor, government procurement officers should know how to look to see which team has experience contributing back to open source communities.

Government needs to play a role of incentivizing good behavior in the open source tools that it depends on. This will help support the long-term needs of this code for the department using it.

EDIT: I note that some of this is contained in "Government is working to be a “good citizen” within the open source software community, making it easy for civil servants to contribute."

chiotis commented 3 years ago

I believe a great way to have an upstream contribution is to involve public universities in dealing with bugs and patches. A team of university students (pre and post graduate) assigned on a specific project on a yearly basis. I am not sure if government employees are an ideal solution to work or even monitor something like this.