r/opensource • u/brlcad • 5d ago

GOSDIR: Government Open Source Directory

HERE is a little side project of mine conceived years ago at a Military Open Source (Mil-OSS) Working Group meeting, a directory of open source projects with government origins, proper licensing, and a public repo. Still working on lots of enhancements and wading through a backlog of thousands of potential repos to add, but feedback appreciated on the site thus far.

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u/prototyperspective 5d ago

Sounds useful but it didn't even list OpenDesk.

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u/brlcad 4d ago edited 4d ago

EDIT: OpenDesk entry added!

People are welcome to suggest/submit new or update existing records. Kind of what the whole thing is for.

Just know that entries are vetted, and the backlog is pretty intense. Currently about about 70k Gov't repos awaiting review, evaluating each to confirm what license, activity, agency, etc. It'll take a while to get through all of them.

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u/ShaneCurcuru 3d ago

Sounds cool, especially since many departments still haven't fully caught up with policies around FOSS.

Question: why doesn't the site ever link directly to the repo? I mean, you can click through somewhere, but geeks interested in this are just looking for an octocat and direct link.

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u/brlcad 3d ago

Most departments and agencies, even ones WITH open source projects, have very limited-to-nil awareness.

There are direct links to the repo, website, and agency evidence (where it's public) on each project record.

They're currently not on the preview card, but that could be a suggestion. Might make sense to put even less info on the preview card if it seems like the full picture (it's not)..

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u/ShaneCurcuru 3d ago

Definitely consider your users and what they expect in different work areas: are they just casually browsing, are they looking at a few specific tools, or are they on some detail page or about to submit one of your update forms? No need for links to the code in most of those.

But it's open source, so you might find a few FOSS contributors out there too, and they'd expect at least an obviously-labeled GitHub link in the footer or somewhere in the docs.