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DNC just open-sourced their voter registration platform

democrats.github.com

1–10 of 33 posts

Re: DNC just open-sourced their voter registration platform

#2
The first part of the software license looks to be BSD/MIT-like with the to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,... sentence, but then there's this paragraph:

This permission does not include: (a) any use of the Software other than for its intended purpose; or (b) any use of the Software in any manner that violates applicable law. Any use of the Software other than as specifically authorized herein is strictly prohibited and will terminate the license granted herein.

Re: DNC just open-sourced their voter registration platform

#3
post #2

The first part of the software license looks to be BSD/MIT-like with the to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,... sentence, but then there's this paragraph: This permission does not include: (a) any use of the Software other than for its intended purpose; or (b) any use of t…

Trying to cover their ass if it's used to commit voter fraud?

Re: DNC just open-sourced their voter registration platform

#4
post #2

The first part of the software license looks to be BSD/MIT-like with the to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,... sentence, but then there's this paragraph: This permission does not include: (a) any use of the Software other than for its intended purpose; or (b) any use of t…

I imagine that that's CYA; one thing both party organizations have in common: they are saturated with lawyers.

Re: DNC just open-sourced their voter registration platform

#5
This application is very, very simple; it's a practically the starting skeleton of a modern Rails/Devise application.

One useful reason to bookmark it: it's a pretty good how-to for "any web application whose purpose is to spit out PDF files that need to follow a specific format". There are a LOT of business processes that work like that.

Re: DNC just open-sourced their voter registration platform

#8
post #6

Wouldn't a better strategy be a Twilio app that calls voters and informs them that they are registered to vote already?

The point of this software is to make it easier for people who have never registered before to register. The Democratic party probably spent their resources on this because they think that a large percentage of unregistered voters come from demographic groups that tend to vote for Democrats, such as recent college grads who were not yet old enough to vote in the 2008 election.

How would your strategy improve the expected outcome for the Democrats?

Re: DNC just open-sourced their voter registration platform

#9
post #5

This application is very, very simple; it's a practically the starting skeleton of a modern Rails/Devise application. One useful reason to bookmark it: it's a pretty good how-to for "any web application whose purpose is to spit out PDF files that need to follow a specific format". There are a LOT of business processes that work like that.

it is missing integration tests, though

Re: DNC just open-sourced their voter registration platform

#10
post #2

The first part of the software license looks to be BSD/MIT-like with the to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,... sentence, but then there's this paragraph: This permission does not include: (a) any use of the Software other than for its intended purpose; or (b) any use of t…

In particular this means that this is anything but open source (at least if you go by the OSI definition, which I do).
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