Action Needed: Confirmation from Project Leads

[gbinal]

Hi folks - we're looking to publish this source code policy as a formal statement by 18F of how we operate.

Please take time this week to review it and confirm with a 👍 that your project is in alignment with it. Thanks!

@quepol @aaronsnow @jpyuda @dwcaraway @aaronsnow @leahbannon @jroo @rjmajma @polastre @GUI @amoose @RobertLRead @arowla

[dwcaraway]

👍

Question

When contracting developer services, 18F will require vendors to use FOSS and develop open-source code wherever possible, given the rationale above.

Should contractors also be required to use a permissive (non-copyleft) license?

[RobertLRead]

I thought permissive means the opposite of share_alike.

Sent from my HTC One on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network

----- Reply message -----
From: "Dave Caraway" [email protected]
To: "18F/source-code-policy" [email protected]
Cc: "Robert L. Read" [email protected]
Subject: [source-code-policy] Action Needed: Confirmation from Project Leads (#3)
Date: Wed, May 28, 2014 6:14 PM

Question

When contracting developer services, 18F will require vendors to use FOSS and develop open-source code wherever possible, given the rationale above.

Should contractors also be required to use a permissive (copyleft) license?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[dwcaraway]

@RobertLRead oops you're right, i meant non-copyleft. Updated - thx

[GUI]

On the api.data.gov front, all the API Umbrella code should be in alignment (it's all MIT licensed). However, this made me realize we don't have a license on the website content for api.data.gov (so this is all the documentation, static web pages, etc). This is less code, but should we still assign all this content under public domain (that would seem to mirror the 18f.gsa.gov repo)? If so, does anyone know if I need to get permission from previous contributors since we didn't have an explicit license previously? If so, I can do that (and I wouldn't anticipate it being a huge deal, since there's just a couple people I need confirmations from).

[polastre]

Grammar police:

meet citizen and consumer needs

Can this just be "consumer" or "consumer and business"? Citizen is limiting.

There's a few sentences that end in a preposition. Should eliminate those.

The code is free for the American people as it says a number if times, but what about international parties interested in using our code? For example, the world bank wants to use Midas.

This doc also says nothing about licenses just open source, so we can use any license as long as it doesn't "violate" the policy?

[gbinal]

@GUI - great call on adding a license to the website content itself. The move is to create an issue to this effect and clearly ask each of the contributors to that material to show their support by commenting with a 👍.

Here's an example of this in action, though on a much larger scale.

[rjmajma]

@dwcaraway It's my personal opinion that contractors should be treated as agents of GSA (and 18F), thereby making their contributed work de facto public domain. However, this depends largely on the agreement made between GSA and the contractor assisting us.

@polastre That's a good point about the international usage of our products. Here's the issue: the work we create as a part of our employment in the federal government does not fall under any kind of copyright protection. It is within the public domain. So technically, a license would be inapplicable to works used within the US. HOWEVER, we can assert copyright protection in certain instances for how our work is used outside of the country. I'll run down exactly how we have to word this and make sure it's reflected in the document. Also, if the code we're modifying is already subject to a license, then that license carries over. I'll make this clearer.

The document is still being actively tweaked and worked on, so expect an update within the next few days.

[arowla]

[image: 👍]

FBOpen is public domain, so we're in alignment.

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Gray Brooks [email protected]
wrote:

@GUI https://github.com/GUI - great call on adding a license to the
website content itself. The move is to create an issue to this effect and
clearly ask each of the contributors to that material to show their support
by commenting with a [image: 👍].

Here's an example of this in action
project-open-data/project-open-data.github.io#135,
though on a much larger scale.

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#3 (comment)
.

Alison Rowland
Software Developer | 18F
202-317-0124

[gbinal]

Thanks for the responses so far. As we work through any remaining questions, I still need a 👍 or other affirmative from:

@quepol @aaronsnow @jpyuda @aaronsnow @leahbannon @jroo @rjmajma @polastre @amoose @RobertLRead

[NoahKunin]

I did a review of all our private repos. We're in a very good place.

@rjmajma: While the Government can assert copyright protection abroad, it's 18F's intention and value not to. Our desire is for the international use of our open source code to be in an identical, or as similar to, legal environment as the domestic scenario.

To that end, we've been pushing that repos release under the CC0 license to resolve the international issue. However, we're going to have to move to a Government authored (with community input of course) license. Draft text has already been sent to OMB and OSTP, and community input is over here.

I'll ping OMB/OSTP today to see if they have any notable commentary. Otherwise, we'll continue with the strategy and ship it.

[rjmajma]

@NoahKunin Oh, CC0 (or similar) is definitely the form of license (or copyright protection, as I confusingly wrote it) I would've advocated for. Glad to see this already has significant momentum.

[NoahKunin]

Additional clarification - the contributing guide refers to these issues in the abstract, as opposed to a specific legal vehicle (CC0 or otherwise).

So by "ship it" I mean post language under an open 18F repo - seems like this one is the right place. Once internal legal checks are complete, then we can formalize in the guide + the actual repos.

[amoose]

We (#USCIS) are contributing to a CfA project which has its own license.

Otherwise, bronto - thesaurus as a service and bronto-gem are compliant 👍

[polastre]

Midas has been doing this since June 2013 so not sure why I have to explicitly concur, but I concur.

[quepol]

👍

but fwiw, we need to clean up our LICENSE files and statements across repos. perhaps someone can create a "snippet.md" in this repo that ppl can copy into their repos' LICENSE and README files?

• fbopen and bronto are using http://unlicense.org/
• myusa and midas are using MIT
• 18f.gsa.gov and notalone are using CC0
• etc.

[jpyuda]

These considerations result in an open-source by default policy at 18F. If a solution cannot be found in the open-source community, 18F may consider other options. Ultimately, the software that best meets the needs and mission of 18F should be used, regardless of whether the software is open source.

My only concern is I'd like this to be stronger. I agree with the spirit of this, but I suspect in many cases we'd be better served to adapt or create new FOSS instead of using something commercial, even in an area with no real FOSS alternative.

(Of course, there are many situations where we wouldn't go down that road. So the language you landed on may well be correct.)

On the whole, 👍

[polastre]

Oh, and MyUSA is 👍 too.

[konklone]

@jpyuda's comment is sharp -- the policy should recognize our capacity to generate open source components where none exist, and that that may well be a superior choice to using a proprietary solution.

One simple pass at that, addition bolded:

These considerations result in an open-source by default policy at 18F. If an existing solution cannot be found in the open-source community, 18F may consider other options, including creating an open-source solution itself. Ultimately, the software that best meets the needs and mission of 18F should be used, regardless of whether the software is open source.

[konklone]

Hey, so @rjmajma made some substantive edits and rearrangement over the weekend, so I think we all need to take a look at it anew.

I've created #6 to be The PR Where We Finalize It. I'm closing this one to direct effort over there.