Government Shutdown

[haleyvandyck]

Due to Congress’s failure to pass legislation to fund the government, we are unable to maintain this site and keep it up to date. Issues and pull requests submitted through GitHub will not be processed until the government re-opens.

Many Regrets. See you on the other side.

Ref #159

[waldoj]

👎

[benbalter]

[StevenBlack]

Unwatching.

Sometimes simple things distinguish between passion and paycheck cashing.

Considering hundreds of thousands smart people freely give brain-cycles to open-source and open-data projects, this statement by @haleyvandyck speaks volumes.

Looking at activity, the whole White House open source initiative appears to be window dressing anyway.

What @haleyvandyck is effectively saying is: we're using this pretense to transition from doing nothing to officially doing nothing.

[waldoj]

@StevenBlack demands that pull requests be merged promptly by furloughed workers! They must risk their jobs by doing so in flagrant violations of federal regulations! These pull requests cannot wait! It's a data-mergency!

[rgbkrk]

@StevenBlack - Federal regulations restrict them from being able to work while furloughed. In particular --

The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal employees from ... accepting voluntary services for the United States, or employing personal services not authorized by law, except in cases of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property. 31 U.S.C. § 1342.

[konklone]

Time to get gittip.com/whitehouse set up so we can keep this moving!

(@StevenBlack - they're legally forbidden from doing any work here. It doesn't have anything to do with their personal feelings.)

[rgbkrk]

@StevenBlack - It's worth noting that they can hack on open source all day, it just can't be in an official capacity. That includes this repository.

[mapmeld]

@StevenBlack this is how the shutdown and the longer-term sequester work: a decision is made as to which employees continue to work and later get backpay, and which employees whose offices are closed and unpaid except for emergencies. Presidential Innovation Fellows (very passionate about Open Gov!) are affected by the sequester and have been dealing with this for a while. It's no more a failure of passion than when a grocery store cashier goes home after the store closes.

[atheken]

@StevenBlack I think the point here is that many agencies are actually posting similar notices today. It's a political move to show how many services are being disrupted due to the impasse in congress, I don't think it has anything to do with personal passions.

[theory]

👎

[olyerickson]

I think there is a deeper issue here: with government employees as the (apparently only) committers, development is at risk when disturbances such as shutdowns come along. There ought to be a way to include as committers a few trusted contributors from outside the government.

[atheken]

@olyerickson - Maybe, though, this is really not much different than any other Open Source project. Github has made it much easier to fork than anywhere else, and has some info about project activity, so it's somewhat up to the consumer of these projects to decide whether they trust the fork, or if the main project is recent enough.

There's always the question of whether the "canonical" version is up-to-date, but again, what are the guidelines for "trusted committers."

[jedsundwall]

@StevenBlack do you think most institutionally-run repos on GitHub are managed by gracious unpaid volunteers? I'm certain that most aren't.

+1 to @haleyvandyck for eschewing the mealy-mouthed "due to the lapse in federal government funding" language so many other agencies are using. Way to tell it like it is.

[waldoj]

I think there is a deeper issue here: with government employees as the (apparently only) committers, development is at risk when disturbances such as shutdowns come along.

That, unfortunately, is necessary. Contributions to this project can and do make policy changes, and those policy changes frequently need to be reviewed by White House attorneys. Allowing changes to a policy document by folks not in a legal position to make those changes is courting trouble, at best.

That said, I agree with you regarding federal repositories for software, as opposed to text, albeit based only on a minute's consideration.

[parkr]

I'm really 😦 to see this, but understand the circumstances. Maybe folks involved in Project Open Data should go storm the Capitol and demand the return of the POD team?