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[-] bitofarambler@crazypeople.online 456 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

really good article with a couple surprises in there.

"some people speculated that, because of the political pressure against it, its release must have been an act of resistance by someone within the IRS. But the open sourcing of the program was always part of the plan, and was required by a law called the SHARE IT Act. It happened “fully above board, which is honestly more of a feat!,” Given told 404 Media. “This has been in the works since last year.”

Vinton told 404 Media in a phone call that the open sourcing of Direct File “is just good government.”

“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 is just good government and should absolutely be the standard that government technologists are held to.”"

[-] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 140 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Dunno, sounds like some fucking commie shit to be. And not the kind i can someyimes get on board with when it comes time to do secret police shebanigans, but the bad scary kind where they dont even have a use for police.

Wouldn't it be better to just give the code for free to a good corporate citizen who can be entrusted with its stewardship?

Edit: yes of course we rent it back!

[-] bitofarambler@crazypeople.online 79 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

only if the corporate citizen promises really hard we can trust them. like a super promise.

[-] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 months ago

Also we have to pay them whenever we want to use the code. Yes.

[-] bitofarambler@crazypeople.online 16 points 2 months ago

you bought it, why shouldn't you also rent it?

[-] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 2 months ago

Exactly! Twice the value for my tax dollar!

Not that I've ever paid taxes, but, you know, if my accounting department all suddenly died in mid march some year, and i wasnt operated out of a PO box in a tax shelter, i bet i mightve had to.

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[-] czl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 45 points 2 months ago

Bro why are people downvoting this when it is so clearly a joke

[-] fiddledeedee@sopuli.xyz 40 points 2 months ago

because its the internet in 2025 and we simply cannot tell anymore

[-] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 2 months ago

I can think of two reasons and both of them are hilarious.

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[-] Gladaed@feddit.org 15 points 2 months ago

/s dude, this is the Internet and you are not a person with a widely known stance.

[-] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 2 months ago

The candle that burns half as bright burns twice as long, and you, my child, will burn so very long.

[-] Gladaed@feddit.org 13 points 2 months ago

Sick "burn", but still a bit uncalled for, don't you think?

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[-] officermike@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago

“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 is just good government and should absolutely be the standard that government technologists are held to.”"

Nice sentiment, but bad take. Open-sourcing the software that runs our military equipment would be a fantastic gift to the bad actors of the world.

[-] hildegarde 171 points 2 months ago

security through obscurity is not security

[-] bitwyze@lemmy.world 41 points 2 months ago

Security can mean security against hackers, but it can also mean security against revealing classified information. Classified information about weapons systems (e.g. performance characteristics) is inherently embedded into the code running on those systems, and therefore shouldn't be open sourced.

Source: used to write classified code

[-] Pika@sh.itjust.works 43 points 2 months ago

then the code maintainers are doing it wrong.

Any information that shouldn't be public knowledge such as specs, account credentials, access tokens etc should be in a configurable/dynamic format such as an ENV variable or a config file, that way confidential info isn't part of the working tree.

This should not be an issue in a properly maintained codebase.

[-] BassTurd@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago

I think when it comes to the code that controls the navigation, control, detonation, etc, or our munitions, that perhaps that should not be publicly reviewable. Not because of hacking concerns, but it does give info to a potential enemy that could render them less effective.

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 months ago

Eh, there's an intrinsic amount of information about the system that can't be moved into a configuration file, if the platform even supports them.

If your code is tuned to make movement calculations with a deadline of less than 50 microseconds and you have code systems for managing magnetic thrust vectoring and the timing of a rotating detonation engine, you don't need to see the specific technical details to work out ballpark speed and movement characteristics.
Code is often intrinsically illustrative of the hardware it interacts with.

Sometimes the fact that you're doing something is enough information for someone to act on.

It's why artefacts produced from classified processes are assumed to be classified until they can be cleared and declassified.
You can move the overt details into a config and redact the parts of the code that use that secret information, but that still reveals that there is secret code because the other parts of the system need to interact with it, or it's just obvious by omission.
If payload control is considered open, 9/10 missiles have open guidance control, and then one has something blacked out and no references to a guidance system, you can fairly easily deduce that that missile has a guidance system that's interesting with capabilities likely greater that what you know about.

Eschewing security through obscurity means you shouldn't rely on your enemies ignorance, and you should work under the assumption of hostile knowledge. It doesn't mean you need to seek to eliminate obscurity altogether.

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[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 74 points 2 months ago

Our entire Internet, the backbone of all encryption, all runs on open source software.

It is more secure because people can see and audit the code.

Let me flip what you wrote:

Our military equipment already is vulnerable. We just don't know how badly because it's not open source.

Prove it's secure by releasing the code.

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 months ago

Our military equipment already is vulnerable. We just don't know how badly because it's not open source.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm sure China has many copies of the source code already

[-] TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social 31 points 2 months ago

The GitHub page has a section for this:

Exempted Code

Not all source code, documentation and metadata used in the development of Direct File is included in this repository. Specifically, any code or data that is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Federal Tax Information (FTI), Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), or source code developed for National Security Systems (NSS), as defined in 40 U.S.C. § 11103, is exempt. Due to these restrictions, certain pieces of functionality have been removed or rewritten.

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[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 months ago

Maybe it's the military that's incompatible with our values, not open source

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[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 144 points 2 months ago
[-] dhork@lemmy.world 70 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Hurry up and clone that ASAP, this is gonna get taken down once DOGE realizes what it is

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 49 points 2 months ago

More likely they'll just turn off or unpublish the API that it depends on.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 10 points 2 months ago

Is that even available right now? Usually for this type of thing you need API keys, which are not included, nor available at all.

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[-] UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world 113 points 2 months ago

TurboTax owned buy intuit, part of H&R block who has partnered with credit karma. Everything is a monopoly now

[-] smashing3606@feddit.online 38 points 2 months ago

I'm pretty sure intuit and h&r block are competitors, not the same compamy.

[-] CluckN@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

Yeah I saw Monopoly Fortnite I wonder what is next?

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[-] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 55 points 2 months ago

Unless it's maintained it won't be of much use. It needs to be kept up to date with tax laws, and it relies entirely on the IRS accepting the generated returns. It seems it may function for now, though.

Direct File interprets the United States' Internal Revenue Code (26 USC) as plain language questions, the answers to which should be known to taxpayers without need of external instructions or publications. Taxpayers' answers are then translated into standard tax forms and transmitted to the IRS's Modernized e-File (MeF) API, which is available for authorized public use

[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 44 points 2 months ago
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[-] Olgratin_Magmatoe@startrek.website 54 points 2 months ago

It's already got 4 PRs

lol

[-] jayandp@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 months ago
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[-] Smoogs@lemmy.world 44 points 2 months ago

What happened to the title of this?? Jeez

[-] OccasionallyFeralya@lemmy.ml 48 points 2 months ago

“The IRS Tax Filing Software that TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced” might be more clear but headlines try to cut those sorts of words out, unfortunately at the cost of readability sometimes.

[-] jsomae@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 months ago

They accidentally included 8 verbs. (tax, filing, is, trying, kill, got, open, sourced)

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[-] fluxion@lemmy.world 36 points 2 months ago

Suck a bag of dicks, TurboTax

[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 34 points 2 months ago

I got told I couldn't get a tax return because they flagged me for potential fraud, so I have to go to ID.me to verify.. but then my account got banned while trying to verify my information.

Fml

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[-] demizerone@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago

The more money you pay someone to find the loop holes in the tax code the less likely you are to support out government and its war machine.

[-] fiddledeedee@sopuli.xyz 20 points 2 months ago

HA get fucked turbotax

[-] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 months ago

Oh that's awesome. I hope it can still be accepted by the IRS for the future (if we still have one in ~3 years) but it would be neat to just be able to have an open standard for online filing.

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[-] LorIps@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

It's licensed under CC0 to anyone wondering. BSD 0-Clause would probably be better but still fantastic.

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[-] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 15 points 2 months ago

Was the US so behind that they didn't have a way to file taxes online for free?

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[-] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 12 points 2 months ago

THIS is the way.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 11 points 2 months ago
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this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
1475 points (100.0% liked)

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