Apperta guide to working in the open

Apperta believes that making things open makes them better.

All Apperta supported projects are encouraged to work in the open and share what they're doing whenever they can.

Apperta supports many open source projects which it does not itself maintain.

This document outlines the expectations Apperta has of such projects, and how Apperta will behave with respect to those projects.

The goal of this policy is to respect the autonomy and independence of project originators as much as possible while strongly protecting Apperta's community investment.

Request for comment

This document is a proposal, and Apperta actively seeks feedback on it via Github Issues and Pull Requests to this repository.

Code management

In the common case, moving a code repository involves considerable work, none of which improves the quality of the code, the features of the project, and much of which can actually cause harm to the project.

Furthermore Apperta is in general unlikely to be the sole investor in most open source projects it supports over their lifetime. This would in fact be unsustainable and a risk to the projects and the broader ecosystem. Therefore Apperta EXPECTS source code to be managed by whichever person or institution is the maintainer of the proejct.

Responsibilities of Maintainers

1. Projects MUST have an OSI-approved open source license.

2. Projects MUST have a clear copyright notice in the public repository.

3. Projects MUST have a public source code management tool.

4. Repositories SHOULD remain in VCS of the Maintainer AND Apperta SHOULD have a replica in the Apperta Foundation VCS.

5. Projects SHOULD be willing to accept contributions from the community such as Issues and Pull Requests.

6. Projects SHOULD display the 'Supported By Apperta' badge.

7. Source code SHOULD be up to date with the latest development tip.

8. Live, public internet-facing demonstration instances of the supported apps SHOULD be maintained by the originators, under subdomains of the apperta.org top level domain if appropriate.

Responsibilities of Apperta

1. Apperta MUST maintain a simple list or directory of such supported apps and/or components with links to the Maintainer's repository, project documentation, and URLs for demonstration purposes.

2. Apperta MUST have a fork, clone, replica or snapshot of any/all code repositories at the point of completion of a project.

Definitions

• Apperta - "The Apperta Foundation CIC"
• Maintainers - "The individual, group of individuals, organisation, company, or other institution from which the original open source project was created"
• VCS - A component of software configuration management, version control, also known as revision control or source control

Variations

1. From time to time the Apperta Board may update this policy.

Resources

• Exemplar text for repositories regarding reasonable expectations of the community for project and product support
• OSEHRA paper on licensing terms for open source healthcare applications
• The UK government's design principles and examples of how they've been used.

Copyright (c) The Apperta Foundation CIC

License CC-BY-SA-NC

Original draft RFC by Dr Marcus Baw