Proposal: definition of a project

[ElenaFdR]

In publiccode.net PR 57, we discovered that @bvhme and I had different ideas about whether codebases counted as projects. Here's my proposal for our definition of a project.

A project is a time limited or scoped research and/or creative endeavor we initiate independently or collaborate on with an external community that results in a useful, reusable output big enough to justify its own repository.

This definition would include the Standard for Public Code, Governance Game and Illustrations, and exclude guides on About for our day to day activities.

Since open source codebases aren't one-off projects (but rather alive, evolving and hopefully maturing), as is our engagement with their communities, it would be incorrect to describe the codebases we work with as 'projects'.

[Ainali]

Since open source codebases aren't one-off projects (but rather alive, evolving and hopefully maturing), as is our engagement with their communities, it would be incorrect to describe the codebases we work with as 'projects'.

I think I have the same idea as you. But since hopefully, both the Standard and the game will alive and evolving for a long time, with potential communities around them this is not what separates them from codebases. However, I find it hard to write a definition that draws the line between for example the Standard and About.

[ericherman]

If we have good-enough definition that we're all more-or-less using, "project" might seem a handy word to me again. Today, I steer away from the word "project" because it means so many things to different people -- if I can sidestep that, I do.

(Similarly I also tend not to use "program" because a "program manager" may be leading an effort which has little to do with software programs.)

That said, sometimes "project" is exactly the right word, yet often can be qualified, like "research project" for instance.

Regardless, having an index of noteworthy stuff with a short URL is a clear need, perhaps we can address this need with an alternative word. Would "noteworthy.publiccode.net" or similar allow us to steer clear of needing to define what we mean when we use the word "project"?

[ElenaFdR]

A chat discussion with @ericherman just now made clear to me that I consider the 'useful and reusable' part of the definition to be very important - because I'd like to be able to link to projects.publiccode.net (or noteworthy.publiccode.net or coolstuff.publiccode.net) in communications to show that we build clever, useful, important, interesting things.

[Ainali]

Is the difference between our noteworthy stuff and resources in About that they are intentionally meant to also be used by others and not only by ourselves whereas About stuff is mostly for ourselves and possibly only coincidentally useful to others?

[lscheske]

To me it would make sense to define things based on what purpose they serve, rather than whether they will end up in their own repository. So a project is things that we do that are useful and reusable, together with our community - I don't know if we need to put a time limit on a project?

I would also try to adapt our language to what our community expects to hear. From discussions with partners, they all ask about our projects, meaning which codebases we are working on.

I would argue that:

• the Standard is a "guidance/tool", and is the outcome of a project (doing the thing)
• Codebases under stewardship are projects, because we are doing this with the community with the goal of creating something useful and reusable (adn dedicate significant time to it)
• everything on About, but also the Illustrations repo have more to do with our internal processes (not done with the community) and thus are not projects.

[ElenaFdR]

I have some concerns about using projects for codebases:

• as I said above, it sends the wrong signals about our involvement (especially for devs, who may be more familiar with a cycle of budgeting for building but not maintaining software; I've seen this happen in government where procurement people's mental model is closer to a capital investment in physical plant with linear depreciation, rather than adaptable, expansible software)
• leaves us with no handy generic term to use for the intellectual property (cool new stuff) we primarily generate (as opposed to the codebase communities, where we're explicitly /not/ doing the generating)

I don't think telling senior people who ask about our projects which codebases we're working with and where to find the list will lead to dissonance. I'd hope it would give us an opportunity to talk about how we support those codebases and codebase communities.

[ElenaFdR]

Here's a nice example of an organization's resources page, which they define as: "the tools and resources we've found most useful for putting innovation into practice". It includes their own work.

[ElenaFdR]

Based on this discussion, I've concluded that:

• 'resources' more accurately reflects our intentions for our work and others' relationship to it (hopefully one of reuse)
• 'projects' is such a generic term that it becomes controversial and confusing if we mean anything specific by it

Renaming this to 'resources.publiccode.net' is a logical long term goal; in the short term, I've retitled this 'resources and projects' in #16. We also updated the top nav in the Jekyll theme to say 'resources' instead of 'projects'.