Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
1–10 of 78 posts
Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#2Applying versioning to laws is a fantastic idea, if only to make an easily accessible account of legislation's evolution.
Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#3Great idea! can see how this can apply to many other fields than law.
Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#4I find it fascinating that for a repository of German law, written in German, the README and commit history are all in English. I wonder if that will have the effect of scaring off any would-be contributors.
Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#5Amazing idea, which should be implemented by all sorts of governments around the world!
Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#6There was a great discussion on HN previously about this topic which also explains why a straight git implementation isn't viable for US law; I'm not sure if doing the same with Germany's laws would be similarly difficult:
Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#7I find it fascinating that for a repository of German law, written in German, the README and commit history are all in English. I wonder if that will have the effect of scaring off any would-be contributors.
I second that.
I'd like my government to do the same! Don't really care about the versioning system, as long as it's open-source and alive.
Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#8I do not know about Germany, but in my country the issue is that "An update to the law X" may introduce changes not just to parts of X, but to govern the parts of laws Y, Z too. Or it may introduce completly new regulations not being a part of either law text.
This is why it is hard to make current versions of X, Y or Z in terms of a version control.
It is also common to have laws X and Y both applying in the same context, and sometimes it is not clear which one is newer or how to apply "An update to X".
It is little easier to work on a more fine grain, in terms of sections and articles and not the law text as a whole, but this makes it a lot less official.
Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#9Awesome stuff. I couldn't find anywhere though: is this an 'official' project, or is it just someone who processed the XML forms into markdown?
Also, this: "All German citizens can easily find an up-to-date version of their laws online."
And it's only 130 megs of markdown when zipped (246 unzipped)! A mere 4,737,628 lines[1]! Surely you have time to read it, right? And therefore be a well-informed, law-abiding citizen?
I wonder how big America's would be :|
[1] `wc -l $(find . -name '*.md')` admittedly very roughRe: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
#10I find it fascinating that for a repository of German law, written in German, the README and commit history are all in English. I wonder if that will have the effect of scaring off any would-be contributors.
I second that. I'd like my government to do the same! Don't really care about the versioning system, as long as it's open-source and alive.
Actually, it is not "the government" doing this. It is somebody scraping an official web site containing every law, processing it and pushing the result to this repository.