The Hacker News Community (hah) needs to lobby hard to pass a law (what boostrapping!) to require the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Law_Revision_Cou... to maintain the repo as part of their duties, and do it retroactively for the entire history of the US Code.
It's a simple idea; it's cheap; there are no outstanding technical questions; it benefits almost everyone. Let's get this done.
The data is "there" in some some sense, but it is messy, coarse-grained, and arrives slowly.
Once the office is familiar with Git, we can start the conversation about having the new version of the US code instantly ready when a bill is passed. In particular, rather than voting on the informal patch, congress should vote on the final result. (bills are patches, but votes should be on the new state with the patch applied.) Then the office merely supervises the Git repo, and is freed up to focus on other codification tasks, such as hyperlinking definitions, overseeing formalization of the tax code like France did, etc.
Previous discussions often foolishly conflate version control with "no force pushing of any branch" and "all branches must be public". That is stupid. Vote trading will continue to make drafting happen in secret, since it is simple game theory that an "atomic transaction" of many possibly-unrelated things is an efficacious coordination mechanism. This is just about getting the final version and its already-public history cleaned up and mechanized to the greatest degree possible.
It's easy and fun for volunteers to put in the effort once. It's doing the work on an ongoing basis that is less fun and less motivating. The ongoing work --- done without modern tools --- is already that office's responsibility, so this should be too.
>> The Hacker News Community (hah) needs to lobby hard to pass a law (what boostrapping!) to require the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Law_Revision_Cou... to maintain the repo as part of their duties, and do it retroactively for the entire history of the US Code.
> I want to see a practical benefit to maintaining this with public funds versus the usual redlines.
The US government works for the people and, as such, changes made to the US Code over time must be traceable, discoverable, and therefore justifiable by or condemnable to those who are responsible for said changes without fear or favor.
It's a simple idea; it's cheap; there are no outstanding technical questions; it benefits almost everyone. Let's get this done.