“All code paid for by taxpayer dollars should be open source, available for comment, for feedback, for people to build on and for people in other agencies to replicate. It saves everyone money and it is our [taxpayers’] IP,” she said.
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
172 points (100.0% liked)
Free and Open Source Software
19628 readers
48 users here now
If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Nice! We need a Canadian fork
Wow, finally, a feel-good tech story.
Oh nice!
Ugh, it's licensed CC0 public domain. Assholes.
They're not assholes. If this is the work of the federal gouvernment then they're just following the law.
A work of the United States government is defined by the United States copyright law, as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties".[1] Under section 105 of the Copyright Act of 1976,[2] such works are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law and are therefore in the public domain.
Did they even try to get the law changed?
That law has exemptions (eg for the USPS). If they put zero effort into asking legislators to permit the IRS to ensure that the tax payers money doesn't just turn into a subsidy for corporations, they're assholes.
How does this make them assholes?
Because it's a gift to corporations at the expense of taxpayers.
It means that any company can take that code, modify it (as would be required every year per IRS tax changes), and resell it without being required to publish the source code changes.
What many European countries are doing is requiring the government to publish code under a copyleft license. That would allow companies to also benefit from this code to make their own tools (which they could also sell), and it would require them to publish the source code of their improvements.
Basically copyleft legally ensures collaboration. Public domain does not.
Eh, I wouldn't call them assholes for that. I'm sure there's a minefield of legal issues that could come up that is mitigated by releasing it to public domain. By the same logic, anyone can also take the code, modify it, then release their modifications with a copy left license.
Because it’s a gift to corporations at the expense of taxpayers.
Seeing as how the free filing system was shot in the head several times for no other reason but that it directly benefits tax payers, that's not much of gift in comparison to the fact that tax payers will have to keep paying money anyway. If it's any consolation, we might get a FOSS tax filer, which is still better then the current form we got.
I don't see the problem. This can be forked, enhanced, updated, and modified and that version released with an appropriate copyleft license.
Sure; some companies will do the same with utterly horrific copyright licenses. That's fine; as it's in the public domain. We just need some group to work to provide an appropriate copyleft licensed version.
Ideally we should be getting on this fast; but we all know FOSS work isn't going to be fast if it's done by volunteers. Some funds might need raising.
In essence; CC0 is an ultimate copyleft license; as it does not even preclude the use of copyrighting improvements on variant works.
I also think it's important to point out separately that this software can be modified down into an easy to use software package that allows one to input relevant taxable financial data into it; and then when it comes time to file your taxes; you print out a long report; take it to your tax professional, who is now easily able to read that report, and use the information to appropriately file taxes.
Heck; that report might even make it drop dead simple to fill out your own tax forms; should you decide that's what you'd like to do; and you could feed the software the relevant tax forms in and it would fill them out to the best of it's ability using the data provided to it.