This readme serves as an example readme for a government open source project. A brief description of your project would go here.
If you are including a Code of Conduct, make sure that you have a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file, and include the following text in here in the README: "Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms."
Detailed guidance around licenses is available here
Attach the appropriate LICENSE file directly into your repository before you do anything else!
The default license For code repositories is: Apache 2.0
Here is the boiler-plate you should put into the comments header of every source code file as well as the bottom of your README.md:
Copyright 2015 Province of British Columbia
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
For repos that are made up of docs, wikis and non-code stuff it's Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, and should look like this at the bottom of your README.md:
YOUR REPO NAME HERE by the Province of Britich Columbia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
and the code for the cc 4.0 footer looks like this:
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons Licence"
style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/80x15.png" /></a><br /><span
xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" property="dct:title">YOUR REPO NAME HERE</span> by <span
xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" property="cc:attributionName">the Province of Britich Columbia
</span> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>.