The IRS Tax Filing Software TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced
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What happened to the title of this?? Jeez
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What happened to the title of this?? Jeez
“The IRS Tax Filing Software that TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced” might be more clear but headlines try to cut those sorts of words out, unfortunately at the cost of readability sometimes.
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I wonder if this could be altered to work for other countries
It would be nice but I think it is not really possible. Too many difference in the laws I suppose.
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What happened to the title of this?? Jeez
They accidentally included 8 verbs. (tax, filing, is, trying, kill, got, open, sourced)
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Linux geeks, assemble!
Web devs too!
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We need better than that. We need a pinky promise.
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I got told I couldn't get a tax return because they flagged me for potential fraud, so I have to go to ID.me to verify.. but then my account got banned while trying to verify my information.
Fml
Guess that means they don't want your money! Woo! (this is not legal advice, pay your taxes)
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They accidentally included 8 verbs. (tax, filing, is, trying, kill, got, open, sourced)
But most of those aren't used as verbs here.
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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!
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.
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We need better than that. We need a pinky promise.
That's impractical, because for a pinky promise, you need to actually lock pinkies. We need a surrogate, like maybe the Commander in Chief?
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Bro why are people downvoting this when it is so clearly a joke
A lot of people are completely incapable of reading obvious sarcasm, which is too bad.
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Sick "burn", but still a bit uncalled for, don't you think?
A funny joke is always called for.
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A HUD is a HUD
sure but the HUD from the F-35 is very specifically designed to work in an F-35. It's very similar, and comes from the same family, as the software running on other planes. But it's not identical.
And yes, performance limits would be hard coded into the software because the HUD needs to alert the pilot when they are getting close.
Edit: and that's ignoring the fact that a lot of this stuff comes from private companies so you'll run into things like IP/patent laws
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.
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“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.”"
Nice sentiment, but bad take. Open-sourcing the software that runs our military equipment would be a fantastic gift to the bad actors of the world.
So open sourcing Tor, which protects our foreign operatives, was a bad idea? Implementing secure sockets for the web (TLS) was a bad idea? Publishing security vulnerabilities publicly (CVE system) was a bad idea?
All of those help our adversaries, but our adversaries also have an incentive to improve the code so everyone benefits.
Sure, there are probably some things that shouldn't be released (i.e. something w/ a legitimate national security concern), but by and large, most things should. Tax software absolutely should, because there's zero reason for the software you use to file your taxes (which is a legal requirement) to not be publicly auditable, because you're on the hook for any mistakes it makes.
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I am fairly confident that theNSA is aware of this kind of concern and they have an pretty cool repo.
Idk, they didn't appreciate Snowden open sourcing a lot of their documents.
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Yeah, they get open sourced by publishing them over the usual channels during disputes on the War Thunder discord server.
Well yeah, when someone on the internet is wrong, you need to prove it!
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I'm sure a lot of military software, in contrast, is acquired from private companies that retain IP rights. Likely legal exceptions aside.
Ideally, any software the government buys or any firmware that ships on hardware the government buys should be FOSS, but not necessarily released to the public right away (i.e. if there's a legitimate national security risk). That gives the government the option to fix issues they run into instead of being forced to wait for the vendor to fix them (if they ever do).
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You know open-source doesn't mean publicly available. It means the person, or in this case the US government, that brought the software should have free access to the source code to edit and distribute it as they like.
So yes, the military should use something functional equivalent to open source to prevent vender lock in and to allow for external audits. They probably shouldn't give it to Russia or make it freely available online though.
At least not while it presents a national security risk. Once it's largely obsolete, everything should be made public.
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Don't worry, that's all written by defense contractors anyways, so they'll sell it to the US, and to others the US allows, all closed source. The source won't even be open to the US government, either, as that'd harm the bottom line of the contractor (support & maintenance contracts for that closed-source software).
I really don't get why the government does this. The US government is a massive client, and they could probably force their suppliers to provide them an open source license so they can maintain it themselves. What else are military contractors going to do, not sell their guns? It's not like the US gov is going to let them sell to countries we don't like anyway, so it's in their interest to play ball.
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Watch this thread from here on in carefully separate the idealists from those who know what defence is like.
- yes, open-source is the goal of everything that can be opened.
- no, defence code isn't on the list of what can be opened
- yes, obscurity isn't good as a sole effort
- yes, defence in depth
- no the funding to get it to where it's safe to open for randos to submit changes isn't there today
Anything I missed?
Yes, Virginia, it's better to open all the things right now, but there are risks you haven't taken into account because you're not aware of them. The pros are; it's their job and their work, so listen to their expertise no matter what the oppositional/defiant disorder suggests otherwise.
Defense code can absolutely be open source, even the very sensitive code that goes into guidance systems on rockets and whatnot. Open source != publicly available, it means those who receive the code get certain rights to use and modify the code. This is imperative for the US government to provide timely updates to their equipment if the vendor is doing a poor job at it.
Yes, it's ideal to open source everything, but not ideal to release it to the public. Once the code is no longer sensitive (i.e. the equipment is obsolete), it should be released publicly.
