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Version control of Congress?

What a great idea! Karl Fogel, an open-source software developer, writer and activist for copyright reform had this to say in a recent New York Times article:

Karl Fogel, president of the Subversion Corporation, which produces open-source version control software, He sees its power to shape public behavior.

Think of what version control software could mean for the Congress, he was quoted as saying recently at Tim O’Reilly’s blog . If bills were created under a system where strike-throughs and additions were carefully tracked, the public would know which legislator made which change to a proposed piece of legislation as it made its way through the Capitol.

At last, there would be transparency in the legislative process. Best-case scenario, it would shame legislators from inserting language against the public interest and only meant to reward political contributors; at worst, it would make such insertions public and allow the voters to punish the politicians who made them.

“Crossing Out, for Emphasis” by Noam Cohen. NYT 7/23/07.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


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