this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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really good article with a couple surprises in there.
"some people speculated that, because of the political pressure against it, its release must have been an act of resistance by someone within the IRS. But the open sourcing of the program was always part of the plan, and was required by a law called the SHARE IT Act. It happened “fully above board, which is honestly more of a feat!,” Given told 404 Media. “This has been in the works since last year.”
Vinton told 404 Media in a phone call that the open sourcing of Direct File “is just good government.”
“All code paid for by taxpayer dollars should be open source, available for comment, for feedback, for people to build on and for people in other agencies to replicate. It saves everyone money and it is our [taxpayers’] IP,” she said. “This is just good government and should absolutely be the standard that government technologists are held to.”"
Dunno, sounds like some fucking commie shit to be. And not the kind i can someyimes get on board with when it comes time to do secret police shebanigans, but the bad scary kind where they dont even have a use for police.
Wouldn't it be better to just give the code for free to a good corporate citizen who can be entrusted with its stewardship?
Edit: yes of course we rent it back!
To be fair, since it's public domain, anyone can take it, modify it (and not release modifications), and try to screw you over w/ it.
No but im saying it shouldn't be public, it should be given to a good corporate citizen to maintain so we can rent it back when we need it.
Well, public domain gets you halfway there. You can still rent it later, provided the original is user-unfriendly enough that you'd be interested in alternatives.
Okay but 'public domain' is communist, and everyone within 20 miles of it should be killed
But its not physical so there is no precise location for it, and the only way to sidestep this existential problem is by not having a public domain, so maybe my headache goes away.
Hmm, maybe we could make private domain? It's like public domain, but private.
Right, so you could only access it by paying corporate citizens. Yes.