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.”"

Wouldn’t it be better to just give the code for free to a good corporate citizen who can be entrusted with its stewardship?

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.

That's impractical, because for a pinky promise, you need to actually lock pinkies. We need a surrogate, like maybe the Commander in Chief?

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.

I think we should ask Chuck Schumer. He's really good at getting things done.

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.

7 open now, 2 closed

XD

Bro why are people downvoting this when it is so clearly a joke

One of the currently open ones is this one:

Fix: Corrected typo in README.md by akshit0205 · Pull Request #11 · IRS-Public/direct-file

GitHub (github.com)

Hilarious

But most of those aren't used as verbs here.

That's what config files are for. It would be a nightmare to hardcode weight and balance and have to recompile the HUD every time you change the loadout or refuel the plane.

Most code, algorithms, etc are not any more sensitive than the concept of desks and file cabinets. No, guidance programs for missiles probably shouldn't be put on GitHub, but there's a reason RSA and other encryption algorithms were open sourced. It's better to have more eyes looking for inefficiencies, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities than to just assume it's good because no-one on the team responsible is smart/engaged enough to find them.

Low effort pull, deletes the problem instead of putting the work in to correct it. /jk

It's licensed under CC0 to anyone wondering.
BSD 0-Clause would probably be better but still fantastic.

CC0 is a horrible thing to use for software. It seems great, but it specifically does not give patent rights. Compare that to MIT which implicitly does so. CC0 specifically says it does not.