Re:US Constitution – A Git repo with history of edits
by sjy on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @11:19PM
(#21341368)
If the legal field doesn’t need anything more complicated, I suppose you think this Git repo is a pointless novelty, not something that would actually be really useful if it were available and authoritative for all statutes?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:US Constitution – A Git repo with history of edits
by gamblor956 on Thursday October 24, 2019 @10:47AM
(#21345182)
We're talking about two very different things: a single legal agreement vs a database of laws.
Something like this already exists in multiple forms because it is very useful. It's so useful that the owners of those sites can charge lawyers a lot of money for access... Hundreds of $ per month.
Re:US Constitution – A Git repo with history of edits
by sjy on Thursday October 24, 2019 @04:27PM
(#21348805)
They wouldn’t be able to charge so much if the laws were published using a machine-readable version control system. Citizens should expect this from their legislature; lawyers shouldn’t be allowed to paywall historical information about public laws. This Git repo is a good illustration of how easily the legislature could solve an important legal problem with free software engineering tools that facilitate reuse and permissionless innovation, rather than leaving companies to solve it with crappy paywalled web apps that contractually prohibit reuse of their content.