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The People's Code

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Re: The People's Code

#131

Post by trendia »

zanny wrote: post #28
tommynicholas wrote: post #19

If there's one thing that deserves a federal massive budget, it's this. If laws and regulations can be understood easily by software, we would remove so many problems the government creates. Complexity would be easier to manage, but also transparency would inherently breed simplicity.

Just for an example, HNR Block and other companies built on doing your taxes for you lobby the government to prevent simplification of the tax code, because they profit off its complexity. The same applies to almost all law. The complexity does not exist without a reason - there is almost always some entity actively funding the continued obfuscation of law for profit. So don't expect government to ever actively get s…

The bigger influence on the tax code is the litany of deductions, which are lobbied for by the wealthy.

The value of a $100,000 deduction is worth $30,000 to a wealthy person, but probably around $1 for H&R block.

edit: fixed

Re: The People's Code

#132

Post by TeMPOraL »

GrinningFool wrote: post #118
inimino wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly the same as choosing to use something that is hosted on someone else's server, which they could then subsequently modify now that you are using it in a very high-profile project. Of course, judging candidates' by the code quality of their campaign websites is a rather obscure and somewhat useless pastime.

True (on both counts). And yet it's common practice to include libs, fonts, and other bits from third party sites that the dev has no control over

It's a stupid and lazy practice. It's common because most web developers aren't exactly highly trained specialists who know what they're doing.

Re: The People's Code

#133

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

iamatworknow wrote: post #124
joepie91_ wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting issues to a vendor takes a hell of a lot of effort and time compared to idly posting them in a comment thread. This is like those remarks along the lines of "it only takes 5 minutes to submit a patch to the documentation". No, it doesn't - it takes 5 minutes to write it and create a PR, and usually two hours to defend it from the maintainer's criticisms.

>usually two hours to defend it from the maintainer's criticisms Isn't that what we want, though? Discussion and review, particularly with the people who are most familiar with the project (the maintainers) is what makes software better, not worse. If you're not willing to do that then why comment on issues you find in open source projects at all, other than to stroke your own ego?

> Isn't that what we want, though?

Generally. But on the other hand, no, this isn't a monoculture, where everyone wants the same exact thing.

> Discussion and review, particularly with the people who are most familiar with the project (the maintainers) is what makes software better, not worse.

Tell that to vim: https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/638

Tell that to node.js: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/5798

Tell that to WordPress: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21022 https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/25052 etc.

Despite all of the time that industry experts have contributed towards identifying and discussing security problems, these projects have severe inertia in the security realm.

How much more time do you want us to carve out of our lives for projects that won't fix their problems?

> If you're not willing to do that then why comment on issues you find in open source projects at all, other than to stroke your own ego?

I don't like the way this is framed. It's a hidden false dichotomy.

Re: The People's Code

#134

Post by maxerickson »

trendia wrote: post #131
zanny wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for an example, HNR Block and other companies built on doing your taxes for you lobby the government to prevent simplification of the tax code, because they profit off its complexity. The same applies to almost all law. The complexity does not exist without a reason - there is almost always some entity actively funding the continued obfuscation of law for profit. So don't expect government to ever actively get s…

The bigger influence on the tax code is the litany of deductions, which are lobbied for by the wealthy. The value of a $100,000 deduction is worth $30,000 to a wealthy person, but probably around $1 for H&R block. edit: fixed

It's worth more like $30,000. You only save the tax on the deduction, not the whole thing.

(and some deductions will of course be worth less than the tax; a $100,000 donation to the Red Cross costs $100,000 and doesn't have any financial return, so the $30,000 tax benefit there costs $70,000)

Re: The People's Code

#135

Post by CaptSpify »

mwfunk wrote: post #66
ohyoutravel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is...most jobs. Unless I'm not understanding your meaning. Many jobs will fire you for, say, getting a DUI or getting arrested for drug possession or something. And many employers do drug testing. But realistically, a "limited sub-selection of possible activities" is just about everything everyone else can do, except maybe go to Cuba or smoke pot, the latter of which will get one fired at many non-government pla…

Smoking weed is not going to get you fired anywhere , except for the worst jobs in the worst places. Any place that does regular drug testing and/or cares one teeny tiny itsy bitsy bit about employees smoking weed when they're not working is guaranteed to be a terrible place to work at, for that and any number of other reasons. There is not a single reputable company in the entire tech industry that does this.

> Smoking weed is not going to get you fired anywhere, except for the worst jobs in the worst places.

Do you have numbers to back this up? Because almost every place I've worked at has had this policy. I think it's a terrible policy and should be illegal, but it's been pretty standard everywhere. Maybe it's not common in SV, but everywhere else it seems to be the norm, IME.

Re: The People's Code

#136

Post by iamatworknow »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #133
iamatworknow wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>usually two hours to defend it from the maintainer's criticisms Isn't that what we want, though? Discussion and review, particularly with the people who are most familiar with the project (the maintainers) is what makes software better, not worse. If you're not willing to do that then why comment on issues you find in open source projects at all, other than to stroke your own ego?

> Isn't that what we want, though? Generally. But on the other hand, no, this isn't a monoculture, where everyone wants the same exact thing. > Discussion and review, particularly with the people who are most familiar with the project (the maintainers) is what makes software better, not worse. Tell that to vim: https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/638 Tell that to node.js: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/5798 Tell…

I don't disagree with your or joepie91_'s points in that many (maybe most) open source project maintainers are perhaps more guarded and difficult in accepting contributions than they should be.

That said, even if you submit a pull request or an issue ticket and the maintainer doesn't follow up, or is making the issue unnecessarily complicated to resolve formally and merge into the main branch, at least the record of your findings is there attached to the repo as a rejected pull request or a closed issue ticket, and that can help someone who comes along after the fact who maybe experienced the same issue you did and can benefit from your comments. Maybe that same person who comes along later will have the time to fight for having the changes merged, and can use your comments as further evidence that the issue is worth reconsidering.

I stand by the idea that finding the issue, but posting it on an unrelated forum (like HN) instead of attaching it to the project itself serves no purpose than to tell others who are probably not even users of the open source code "look at this problem I found/solved, aren't I great?"

Re: The People's Code

#137

Post by pvg »

rayiner wrote: post #116

Interesting that someone approved the communist reference (or that people didn't perceive that as a communist reference). It's not the 1980s anymore I guess.

Do you mean 'people's'? That would make 'the people's house' as a way to describe US executive mansions and legislature buildings communist references as well.

Re: The People's Code

#138

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

iamatworknow wrote: post #136
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that what we want, though? Generally. But on the other hand, no, this isn't a monoculture, where everyone wants the same exact thing. > Discussion and review, particularly with the people who are most familiar with the project (the maintainers) is what makes software better, not worse. Tell that to vim: https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/638 Tell that to node.js: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/5798 Tell…

I don't disagree with your or joepie91_'s points in that many (maybe most) open source project maintainers are perhaps more guarded and difficult in accepting contributions than they should be. That said, even if you submit a pull request or an issue ticket and the maintainer doesn't follow up, or is making the issue unnecessarily complicated to resolve formally and merge into the main branch, at least the record of…

In this case: I did, and it was immediately closed without any change to the code, documentation, process, or culture.

Re: The People's Code

#139

Post by sametmax »

OliverJones wrote: post #126

How about open source code for some makes and models of voting machine? The US Veterans' Administration health records software system is in the public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistA#Licensing_and_disseminat... But it's not listed here. (It's also kind of complex. "wget; tar x; ./configure ; make" probably won't get you a running instance. Still.

That would not improve things.

A voting system must be able to be checked by any citizen at any moment.

Most of the citizen can't:

- understand a complex code.

- ensure the machine is running this code, easily, conveniently or quickly.

- ensure the machine is not, or will not be hacked, by software or hardware mean.

- ensure the program does calculate the votes correctly, with no bug.

- do any of this in an autonomous and spontaneous way required to make a check healthy.

Re: The People's Code

#140

Post by iamatworknow »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #138
iamatworknow wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your or joepie91_'s points in that many (maybe most) open source project maintainers are perhaps more guarded and difficult in accepting contributions than they should be. That said, even if you submit a pull request or an issue ticket and the maintainer doesn't follow up, or is making the issue unnecessarily complicated to resolve formally and merge into the main branch, at least the record of…

In this case: I did, and it was immediately closed without any change to the code, documentation, process, or culture.

I'd say you did your due diligence then.
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