4 ms·
They should open source this. I would actually contribute to making this usable.
by opzz 3y ago
They should open source this. I would actually contribute to making this usable.
- Y_Y 3y agoWho else should own the code but the citizens of the country that made it?
- amelius 3y agoMakes you wonder why there wasn't an open source tool for this to begin with. Why did nobody feel the urge to make this?
- staringback 3y agohttps://ustaxes.org https://ustaxes.org
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- samrus 3y agoI would imagine because of the self barter nature of open source. Open source only works when the group that can make the tools are also the group that uses them. So they are bartering with themselves. That's how they "pay" for it. But contributing back to the shared pool of resources Taxpayers can't contribute back to the pool that software engineers use. The people who build it will not be "compensated" with other tools that they can the use for free. So they don't build them
- deeg 3y agoMaybe it should be open source but read-only. The only opposition to a government filing system that I think makes any sense is that we shouldn't necessarily trust the government to get the taxes right*. Making the tax software open source (or public) would mitigate that concern. * - It's not something that I'm concerned about but I think some skepticism of the government is healthy if easily addressed.
- MontyCarloHall 3y ago>Open source only works when the group that can make the tools are also the group that uses them Counterpoint: Blender is a wildly successful open-source 3D modeling tool. Yet the majority of Blender developers are not 3D artists, and the majority of Blender artists are not developers.
- chaostheory 3y agoSecurity through obscurity?
- cdelsolar 3y agoI've felt the urge to make it for a long time, but there are other things I was more passionate about. I did actually start looking into it this past tax cycle mostly out of anger/spite at Intuit, but I'm glad the govt is doing something now. I think it should be open source.
- npteljes 3y agoThey didn't feel the urge for needless responsibility, is what first comes to my mind. Many open source tools, like GNU grep that I just checked, contain text that points out that they take 0 responsibility for the correctness of the software. In case of a serious thing like taxes, this is even more important.
- ploxiln 3y agohttps://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ It's just a bit too much grunt work to make something that lots of people really want to use. Tax codes change very year, there are 50 states in the US with different tax codes, it's a lot of work to review contributions (are you a tax lawyer familiar with all 50 states ...) Lots of successful open source projects are started by one person, who spends a few years making something very useful for themselves, and sharing it, then slowly growing the contributor pool. But this kind of project is a lot more work than just doing your own taxes! And nobody wants to use it as-is 2 years later, it needs more maintenance work every year to be baseline useful, a lot more than it takes to just do your own taxes.
- noisy_boy 3y agoMoreover, experts like tax lawyers don't have any incentive to contribute; if the system turns out to be that simple and effective, they don't have much left to do.
- amelius 3y agoPerhaps LLMs would be a perfect fit for working through tax code and generating a large set of computer-readable business rules from it.
- ajmurmann 3y agoSource-available might be more practical in this case. Low-quality PRs and issue reports can be a massive drain on a project. A IRS tax-payer tool is about the most likely project I could think of to attract massive amounts of that.
- bguebert 3y agoIt's the exact opposite of a fun to work on project. It would be all maintenance and constantly changing specs.
- cactusfrog 3y agoI want to start making a series of open source template sites for government agencies
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://design-system.service.gov.uk/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ https://designsystem.digital.gov/documentation/showcase/ https://designsystem.digital.gov/documentation/showcase/
- DubiousPusher 3y agoUS needs an open software and open hardware mandate.