Comment by raphman
13 years ago
As discussed in the linked HN discussion, VCS/diffs are not compatible with the established workflow for discussing and changing laws. However, as far as I understand, this repository is not primarily intended as a tool for supporting lawmakers but serves two purposes:
a) It allows the public to track all changes made to a law.
b) it allows NGOs and other parties to suggest changes to a law by forking the repo and sending a pull request. [1]
In summary: no revolutionary shift but a nice tool.
This is about as revolutionary as officially letting the plebs read the bible.
Pretty damn revolutionary.
Anyone can already read the laws, though. I'm less sure that reading them specifically via git is a major revolution. it's possible something compelling will be built on top of it, I'll admit.
For the U.S. code, something like Cornell's LII interface, which for a long time has displayed both the current version of the law and, for any section, the history of amendments to that section, seems more user-friendly than a git repo: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text
>I'm less sure that reading them specifically via git is a major revolution.
You're very right. The hard part is knowing where to look in the documents, not where to go to find the documents.
In a former life I spent a bit of time with my nose in the CFR. The hard part was finding the which regulations pertain to me, googling for "47 cfr 73.3526" was a cake walk.