Feds publish guide to setting up an open source project

18F has published a guide that helps federal government workers standardize GitHub use and better leverage the social coding platform when setting up open source projects.

By GovFresh · July 30, 2015

18F has published a guide that helps federal government workers standardize GitHub use and better leverage the social coding platform when setting up open source projects.

Tips include how to best name and describe projects, create readable READMEs , write user story focused issues, wiki best practices and a GitHub repo checklist.

Additional thoughts that would make the guide more helpful:

Add a section on collaborators and permissions.
Encourage including a link for the 'Website for this repository' next to the description whenever possible.
Next to the 'Edit this page' link, add a 'Submit feedback' link to the issues section for the guide so it's easier to giv feedback. In general, if you're going to have either option, it's best to have both, especially the latter.
One bug: The images on https://pages.18f.gov/open-source-guide/using-the-wiki aren't responsive.

Update:

Thanks to @lukefretwell for suggesting some updates to make the open source guide better - made an issue here: http://t.co/cbMKKbsN9O
— Melody Joy Kramer (@mkramer) July 31, 2015

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Will mark them off as complete as I complete them. Thanks @lukefretwell (His article: http://t.co/QosAccwUNy) h/t @andrefrancisco
— Melody Joy Kramer (@mkramer) July 31, 2015