51–60 of 179 posts
Sorry it might be my turn on the Dunce hat but what is so "Git" here other than the contribution calendar popularized by Github then copied by Gitlab?
Like I get it, but English is fluid and is it really that far to make the assumptive leap from "git" to "github/lab/service", seems pretty clear what they meant (even if it's not completely/technically/um-actually correct because git != github).
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Isn’t that a different concern?
Technically yes, but you can see below that there are several comments about exactly this, i.e. adding raw legal texts into git.
Why should legal texts be any different as far as git is concerned?
I remember reading about someone simply adding legal texts to git. This is pretty much useless. I think that people who do this never saw a commercial legal database (or how it is called). What one usually need, is for example, to have cross-references, i.e. when a law contains phrase like "the certification is issued by a relevant authority", you want to have the "relevant authority" wrapped in a hyperlink pointing…
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> The "commits" to the legal code is published in a government gazette ... The current laws are just the tip of the main branch Unfortunately I think those commits are the laws (depending on the country, of course, speaking for the cases I know). There isn't, except in a few cases, a notion of documents those commits are applied to -the commits are applied to previous commits. It doesn't make a difference functionall…
In the US, the commits (aka bills aka statutes) are the source of truth, but they're regularly compiled and codified into the US code [1] which is analogous to the tip of main. The code is a concise, organized, holistic representation of the statutes, but when people actually get into legal disputes, they have to go back to the original statutes to litigate it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Code
When we do 'git show' we typically look the diff to the parent commit. But in git that's derived data. The 'snapshot' of your files is the fundamental point of view in git, and they are the source of truth (in some sense).
As you they, they make the diffs the source of truth in the US. I think that's how Subversion used to work. I don't know if that's still true, though.
The git model makes diffs between arbitrary commits about equally expensive to produce, no matter how far away in the commit graph they are from each other (if they are even connected at all). It also makes complicated merges conceptually simpler.
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That's the primary difference between common law and civil law countries. In Germany for example, there are regular laws (if you need to know what's legal and what not, these are the ones you read) and change laws (Änderungsgesetze), which usually read like "Law XYZ, Paragraph 5a, Sentence 3 is changed to read as follows: '...', Sentence 7 is appended with '...', Sentence 8 is removed" So at any time, you've got a cl…
I've never understood a strong distinction between common law and civil law. Seems like the only difference is that common law is supposed to involve stronger deference to judicial precedent, although clearly it's not absolute.
The conceptual differences, and the differences in content.
You are right that the conceptual differences are murkier in practice than in theory:
Even in civil law countries, judges tend to defer to precedent, even though they aren't strictly bound by it. And in common law countries, if you are a judge and you don't like a precedent (even a precedent set by a higher court), you can 'just' find enough differences between the case in front of you and the precedents you don't like, and argue away the differences with the precedents you do like.
Content-wise, there's a big difference in how eg German law sees contracts and how English law sees them. But you could (more or less) embed the English definition of contract in a civil law system, just as much as you could embed the German definition in a common law system.
In practice the main difference between English vs German contracts is in the legal boilerplate and fine print. You can think of the boilerplace text like a 'polyfill' or compatibility layer that gets you closer to what you actually want to implement in the main text of your contract.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the primary difference between common law and civil law countries. In Germany for example, there are regular laws (if you need to know what's legal and what not, these are the ones you read) and change laws (Änderungsgesetze), which usually read like "Law XYZ, Paragraph 5a, Sentence 3 is changed to read as follows: '...', Sentence 7 is appended with '...', Sentence 8 is removed" So at any time, you've got a cl…
That’s now what he’s talking about. He is talking about a history of the edits laws in the process of becoming law.
I wonder whether you could represent both at the same time in a single git repository.
Oof. Did the Bundestag recently get promoted to be a manager?
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> I would love to see more governments operate on a Git-first basis, so that each and every decision/contribution can be tracked online for transparency. Alas, that sounds like a great idea in principle, but is probably a bad idea in practice. Speeches in parliament (or on the senate floor, in the US) are already public. And that's a big reason those speeches are useless: they are just used as grandstanding to the ge…
yeah transparency is bad news, the real problem is voters demands for purity from their politicians
I'm afraid an ugly compromise of muddling through with some transparency is the best we can get in practice. At least if your democracy features voting, and especially first-past-the-post voting.
As one alternative, filling your parliament up via sortition might eliminate the downsides of transparency.
Sorry it might be my turn on the Dunce hat but what is so "Git" here other than the contribution calendar popularized by Github then copied by Gitlab?
I feel like you answered your own question... Like I get it, but English is fluid and is it really that far to make the assumptive leap from "git" to "github/lab/service", seems pretty clear what they meant (even if it's not completely/technically/um-actually correct because git != github).
(Okay there's also `git` in the URL, I noticed, which means whoever made the page had that mental mapping in mind but still...)
I just feel clickbaited that this item is at the top of this forum. I'll stop engaging with this now. Nothing of interest for me here.
I would love to see more governments operate on a Git-first basis, so that each and every decision/contribution can be tracked online for transparency. For example in USA we would have budget ceiling crisis, and both parties try to ram through a law to bump up the debt ceiling "to prevent government shutdown". It is being sold as a measure to keep government afloat and running, and is usually ran through pre-holiday…
> can be tracked online for transparency Government and officials will fight to the teeth to avoid accountability and transparency because that's where the money and power is.