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Open Source Effort To Codify America's "Operating System" Online
Rubinstien writes "O'Reilly Radar is reporting on an effort to produce Law.gov, 'America's Operating System, Open Source.' The group Public.Resource.Org seeks to 'create a solid business plan, technical specs, and enabling legislation for the federal government to create Law.gov. [They] envision Law.gov as a distributed, open source, authenticated registry and repository of all primary legal materials in the United States.' According to its new website, 'Law.gov would be similar to Data.gov, providing bulk data and feeds to commercial, non-commercial, and governmental organizations wishing to build web sites, operate legal information services, or otherwise use the raw materials of our democracy.'"
Fuck the Republican party.
They ruined the country and now the can't stop complaining about the people who are fixing their mess.
Anyone got an RSS feed for bribes accepted per politician?
It's open access to this information that democracy is built upon.
Fuck the Republican party.
Wrong O'Reilly. This is Tim, not Bill.
Spectacular idea - maybe, just maybe, if we remember what could be happening, and what shouldn't be happening, things will shape up a bit. Both sides seem hell bent on tearing up everything.
I perused the top level sales pitch docs - can't find any good details on how they'd want to organize it. subdomains for each state? subdomains for each type of law? A giant wikipedia? If info can't be easily found on the site through intuitive methods, it's a "failure" from the start (assuming the intent is availability of the data...).
Anyone have any info on such (ie, how it is going to be organized)?
What does open access to laws have to do with operating systems or open source? Sounds like an attempt to ride the Linux hype wave, and it seems to be succeeding so far.
Anyone got an RSS feed for bribes accepted per politician?
I don't know of one, but I can see an Atom feed of headlines from a site that also has lists of the top contributors to reelection campaigns of representatives like Rep. Boner.
See e.g.: Canlii, Austlii, Bailii, ...
For eons, West and Lexis have been making staggering sums reselling primary legal material to all and sundry. Best of luck to this project in prying that material out of their hands, and in surviving the massive lobbying and astroturfing that will ensue before the project achieves that goal.
"Imaginary solutions to real problems."
... or use the raw materials of our democracy.
I thought capitalism did a pretty good job of using us all.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The sheer VOLUME of laws forms a sea within which lawyers swim. This effort sounds like more utopian mental masturbation.
Issue #15327: Government OS fails to load Constitution.inc. Error message is "But think of the children!"
It's true- I'll waft them up to my face, or fart on something then smell that. I've noticed a difference between smelling farts off my fingers and farting into a towel and smelling that. I prefer the towel. Sometimes, right before I take a shower, I'll wipe my ass with a towel or my underwear to smell my butt-perfume. I frequently pull the covers over my own head when I fart between the sheets. Oh, and I love the smell and frequency of my hangover farts. I love leaving my room for a few minutes and coming back to smell my still-lingering farts hanging in the air. To me its kind of like climing out of the swimming pool, getting in the hot tub for a few minutes, then going back into the pool. If I want to fart without making a lot of noise I'll reach into my pants and hold my buttcheeks apart with my fingers so the gas can leave my asshole unobstructed. it actually makes a very audible "pssssssssssssss" sound. Like if someone was in earshot but they couldn't see me, they would probably be wondering if i was farting with my fingers in my ass.
Sometimes if I'm in public I'll find "discreet" ways to indulge my fart-sniffing penchance. For example I'll try to pass gas as quietly as possible, then discreetly fan my thighs open and closed so the gas is wafted up to my face.
What does open access to laws have to do with operating systems or open source?
There's a reason why they call it a "legal code", and not just because of Dr. Lessig's book.
Sounds like an attempt to ride the Linux hype wave, and it seems to be succeeding so far.
"Law like a free software project" would at least require a patch to the patent code to make it more efficient at rejecting obvious inventions.
AOS discs in mail.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Refactor 200+ years of code written by a constantly changing development team with no central management, revision control, scope checking, flowcharting let alone UML diagrams, and text editor consisting of a feather and some ink?
Sign me the fuck up!
Of course the U.S. Code has revision control. The actual bills look like patches: "Title 17, U.S. Code, section 301, is amended by striking 'foo' and inserting 'bar'." Try reading the Sonny Bono Act to see exactly how the U.S. copyright term got extended.
I guess some marketing type figured 'Public.Resource.Org' was trendy and would appeal to the 'internet generation'. I wouldn't take it seriously going by that name. Similar to 'OO.o', pay the trademark owner or get a different name. They both posses a sense of levity.
What does open access to laws have to do with operating systems
Suing someone over any disagreement is standard operating procedure in the United States.
Or at least take away the 'informative'... I was curious so I looked it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Access_to_Law_Movement
>The Free Access to Law Movement is the umbrella name for the collective of legal projects across several common law countries to provide free online access to legal information such as case law and legislation... The name Legal Information Institute has been widely adopted by other projects. It is usually prefixed by a country or region identifier.
>LII (Cornell) The Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School provides free legal information for the United States. It was the original LII project, founded in 1992.
>CanLII The Canadian Legal Information Institute is the project providing legal information on Canada.
>AustLII The Australasian Legal Information Institute is the project providing Australian and New Zealand legal information.
>BAILII The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (pronounced 'Bailey') is the project providing legal information on England and Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Won't this destroy Lexis and Westlaw's business model?
Is this part of Obama's promise to open source the government by letting us read bills before congress votes on them? Maybe even give congress a chance to read them?
Is this part of Obama's promise to open source the government by letting us read bills before they are voted on? Will congress actually get a chance to read them here?
The first rule of any new project is, of course, to find a good acronym! Doubly so for government projects! AOSOS just doesn't cut it. How can I take them seriously when they can't even come up with a good acronym?
#DeleteChrome
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In many technical areas, such as building codes, the law will say something like, "The city of Nowhere adopts in whole the International Building Code of 2007." The problem is that the International Building Code and most other codes are written and copyrighted by private organization that charge lots of money for a copy.
... an attempt to ride the Linux hype wave ...
There is a 'Linux hype wave'? In which universe?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I deeply love this idea -- rationalizing our Bizarro World legal code, shining light in the dark corners, showing ourselves and the world who we are. Having seen a number of open source projects go all faily because they were dominated by one person/cabal, though, I'll wait until I see how they're going to distribute the workload before I sign up.
Run a virus scan in safe mode to remove the parasites, aka lobbyist.
A project can be as "open source" as it wants, but that doesn't mean it has to take patches, adhere strictly to disclosure policies, or release early/release often.
I'm skeptical, because the same goes for this project of "open sourcing" our "operating system." I don't see how it helps much if we can't contribute our changes back to upstream. Neither do those who submit changes often have any guarantee whatsoever of receiving recognition and getting commit access.
while (1=1) sue();
Defective Logic
Yeah, the paradise of of completely unregulated markets and unrestrained capitalism, like for example the derivative markets. Have you forgotten that last March these unregulated markets almost destroyed the economy of the entire world? Have you not noticed that bailing out the financial greed heads that caused this mess has cost the US government almost a TRILLION DOLLARS? What happened to the to the five or ten or fifteen trillion dollars of evaporated paper profits that these unregulated markets generated? Did they go to the tooth fairy?
For those of us who live in the real world, only one conclusion is possible: libertarianism is organized stupidity. People don't work that way and groups of people don't work that way. Libertarianism is as bogus as Marxism.
You want to go to a liberatarian paradise, I got a suggestion: go to the coast of Somalia. Or the countryside of Afghanistan, or northern Pakistan. In fact, if you look at every location in the world where there is no effective governmental control, it is a violent hell hole. All the nice places have lots of government: western Europe, Japan, Australia, some parts of the USA. Like I said before, libertarian thinking does not apply in the real world.
Open Source == Communism
Communism America
Therfore: Open Source America
Read Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. - You can skip over his use of Sheep as an example if you like.
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
It might be that they really are mixing terms up. Maybe they just mean a open software system that supports their workflows -- some webtool on top of apache/linux, and a internal extended http client for the OCR stuff would do it. Operating System = Software System that enables their work.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
You can modernize it with s/sheep/car/g.
From the URL I conclude those are shoes for suicide terrorists? However I'm not sure that you can get enough explosive into the shoes. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Laws can and must be broken. No government can survive the stringent enforcement of its own laws. This is the fundamental difference between law and procedural computer code. Law requires judgment while code merely requires execution.
On the level that this project seeks to work, however, the task might not be completely foolish.
[signature]
There is a 'Linux hype wave'? In which universe?
Well, 2010 will be the year of the Linux Hype Wave...
Sounds like an attempt to ride the Linux hype wave
There's a Linux hype wave? Woohoo! Someone break out the champagne!
This is a very serious topic and I wish you all the best of luck sorting it out on your Slashdot forum. Hopefully it will lead to some insight for the best off, and at least, some frustration for everyone else like me.
Really though, open source laws?
Open source law would be a great idea. The ability for the people to decide what laws are valid, and which aren't. To alter and modify those already existing. To suggest and add new ones, and get rid of old or unpopular laws. THAT's open source law, and the internet allows it in a fractured and alienated universe like ours.
It's a step in the right direction. I guess.
You might have a point should someone manage to monopolize all the available raw materials necessary for life (i.e. air, water, land), but that's merely a "life-boat situation" and not relevant to everyday economics or social policy.
In that case, capitalism has the weakness that a monopolist can threaten to send an economy back to the stone age.
Complaining about a cartel or monopoly on a service, though, is ridiculous unless the cartel in question is forcibly preventing others from offering the same service
In communications, for instance, the FCC forcibly prevents wireless competition by exclusively reserving (allegedly too much) spectrum for emergency first responders and the armed forces. Land owners forcibly prevent wired competition by owning the land between the central office and subscribers.
How will this be different than the LII at Cornell Law School (www.law.cornell.edu)?