Use ARL policy as a starting point for code.mil

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

• Copy ARL policy to this repository on the gh-pages branch
  • Note / cite that origin is ARL
  • 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/)
• Turn it into a SIMPLE web page that can be hosted at code.mil
  • Use styling & templates per https://standards.usa.gov/page-templates/ from 18F
  • Mention DRAFT/DISCUSSION status of the document
  • Use Jekyll to convert markdown to html
• Replace all mentions of Army Research Lab with DoD
• Replace tone of document from “This is official ARL policy” to “DDS recommends you do this”
• Offer DDS assistance to other DoD agencies in implementing these recommendations
• 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
• Update vague references to “DoD Legal” to be “your agency’s legal department” and similar.
• Change RFC 2119 wording “MUST”, “SHOULD”, … (which is appropriate for policy) to “should” and other language that is appropriate for a recommendation
• Check all links, footnote references and glossary entries
• Reword any language that appears like Defense Digital Service is speaking on behalf of DoD, because they’re not
• Clearly describe the role of the Defense Digital Service in supporting the DoD in the summary
• 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]

@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]

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