Codebase stewardship can be provided to an existing codebase. In this case, there might be some important considerations about how to transition and budget for that.
How to start
As set out in the codebase stewardship lifecycle, a codebase must first be proposed to, or identified by, the Foundation for Public Code.
Existing codebases are then assessed o their purpose, code, community and scalability and Standard for Public Code.
What developing organizations need to do
The developing organization needs to commit developer time and budget to:
- make their contributions compliant with the standard
- make their contributions, as well as the entire project, reusable by others
- partake in the community to further the development and help others reuse the codebase
We also need the developing organization to give us:
- support in product marketing and access to other organizations to enable reuse
- organizational knowledge on procurement and technology to help others reuse the codebase
How we support developing organizations
We will:
- conduct audits to help comply with the standard on every pull request
- give advice on working in the open, including how to document and configure repositories
- provide training and workshops to develop better reusable codebases as well as working with the community
- run community events and community calls to integrate a community
- connect relevant members of this or other communities to increase uptake and contributions
- develop storytelling and marketing of the project based on best practices and research
- provide prospective reusers and contributors with a helpdesk to answer their questions on issues ranging from installations to procurement
- help create budgets and frame costs