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How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

arstechnica.com

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Re: How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

#82

Post by TheGrumpyBrit »

My side gig, like most sites these days, publishes a privacy policy and terms of service. From the start, I published those documents in a public Git repository - it provides a clear source of what version was in force at the time of any given argument. When you might later be discussing the content of those documents in court, that can be essential.

Of course, it could also work against you, but either way, it's one less thing that's open for discussion.

Re: How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

#84

Post by Buetol »

sytse wrote: post #27

Someone make a site that has French laws in GitLab https://www.lafabriquedelaloi.fr/articles.html?loi=pjl12-689

Hi, the GitLab for the french laws from La Fabrique is here: https://git.regardscitoyens.org/parlement

It's a only a small part of the laws published on https://lafabriquedelaloi.fr for now but should be complete soon !

Disclaimer: I work on the project

Re: How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

#85

Post by sah2ed »

dgreisen wrote: post #57
eletious wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of out there, but what prevents modification of the law from bad actors? Git history plays a part but is it possible for someone to edit a change and play all the subsequent changes on top of it, with the hope that nobody notices the sha change?

We have internal systems that allow us to audit/authenticate the repository. We will be deploying a cryptographic authentication framework based on TUF in Q1 2019 that will make it possible for _anybody_ to audit/authenticate the repository.

For anyone else wondering about TUF, I believe it refers to The Update Framework (TUF)[0].

[0] https://github.com/theupdateframework/tuf

Re: How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

#87

Post by skohan »

gammateam wrote: post #25

I've been wanting this for a long time, I wanted to take it further though: I want draft laws, I want to see all representatives as contributors and be able to see their contributions and changes to draft laws. the House should have a master branch that submits pull requests to another repository, the other chamber having one too The Governor/President gets to approve PR's from that jurisdiction It would become SUPER…

I'm very much in favor of leveraging the advantages of version control software for legal text. Git seems perfect for this, but GitHub is a terrible choice to host it. Surely we don't want a large corporation owning the platform on which our laws are enshrined. It seems like it would be much better for this to be self-hosted.

Re: How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

#88

Post by pbw »

I wrote this a while ago: http://www.kmeme.com/2010/03/healthcare-diff.html

I wonder how well code-style line-oriented diffs work for laws. If you word wrap then your single-line changes can cascade and effect many lines. If you don’t word wrap seems like you need a better way to see diffs within long lines. Seems totally solvable, but that what github does for code might not be right.

But this is so awesome, pull requesting a typo. Go DC really forward thinking.

Re: How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

#90

Post by speleding »

skohan wrote: post #87
gammateam wrote: post #25

I've been wanting this for a long time, I wanted to take it further though: I want draft laws, I want to see all representatives as contributors and be able to see their contributions and changes to draft laws. the House should have a master branch that submits pull requests to another repository, the other chamber having one too The Governor/President gets to approve PR's from that jurisdiction It would become SUPER…

I'm very much in favor of leveraging the advantages of version control software for legal text. Git seems perfect for this, but GitHub is a terrible choice to host it. Surely we don't want a large corporation owning the platform on which our laws are enshrined. It seems like it would be much better for this to be self-hosted.

Github does not own git, it only owns the UI that they've built on top of it. You can simply clone the repo and take it somewhere else and you can find an open source UI replacement to put on top too (e.g. Gitlab).

Github is free to use for open source projects, self-hosting by the government would only make it more expensive for the tax payer.

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