It was interesting getting to chat with the XKDR team about a point of view I’ve had for a long time, about custom software built by and for govt departments and ministries. Worldwide.
When custom applications are being built using taxpayer money, the taxpayer is supposed to have free access to the asset afterwards, unless there is a good reason why the government cannot permit such access for the greater good. I see no reason why the source code of custom applications cannot be made available as open source for the worldwide developer community, and the larger worldwide population, to download, inspect, and use. One of Creative Commons licences would be ideal.
“Making software available as open source” has been done before, sometimes in ways which render the software unusable. Three components must be delivered in the open source “package” for each application:
- The source code itself, with automated tests bundled with the source
- a container image (I mean “container” in the sense of “Docker” or “Kubernetes”) which one should be able to download and run without any messy configuration or messing around, which will download the source code from the public repository (e.g. Github), compile it and deploy it somewhere with one click. In essence, a container which delivers the build and deployment automation for the application.
- Documentation, both for the source code and the build process. The source code documentation must be generated from the source files using a too like “javadoc” or “go doc” or their equivalent.
Just making the source code available is of little use.
There are many other misconceptions around this idea, which I try to address in the 15 mins as best as I can.
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