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!
only if the corporate citizen promises really hard we can trust them. like a super promise.
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?
I think we should ask Chuck Schumer. He's really good at getting things done.
Perfect, and since he's in his 70s, he has all of that experience keeping promises to draw on.
Also we have to pay them whenever we want to use the code. Yes.
you bought it, why shouldn't you also rent it?
Exactly! Twice the value for my tax dollar!
Not that I've ever paid taxes, but, you know, if my accounting department all suddenly died in mid march some year, and i wasnt operated out of a PO box in a tax shelter, i bet i mightve had to.
All of the sweet, sweet gross domestic product statistics. Mmm I love GDPness.
All that gdpness hot and throbbing in my mouth as i wrap my accounting department around it, and extract everything i can. I'll be methodical, ruthless, and messy, as i extract every last bit.
Maybe we can do a three way where i let our hot cia affiliated friend tickle your labor while i do?
You know, for your birthday?