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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

The only silver lining to this is that since the direct file code is open source, forks have already sprung up.

What I would love to see is one of these forks gain prominence and become the “Debian” of tax filing while TurboTax and HR block are the “Windows” and “MacOS” of the tax filing world

Granted I’ve been in this industry long enough to know that this is a tall tall order and finding consistent maintainers will be a huge challenge. But who knows maybe this will piss off just the right billionaire to make them dump a few dollars into a dev team that can build FreeFile

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What does it mean to open source this? Genuinely. Won't the irs just say, "we only accept digital filing from known providers"?

The workaround is for everyone to coordinate , print and mail physical returns. Let IRS have fun with scanning and processing :) enough people do this, IRS would open up digital filing again

Just Print + Mail. Sure it's an extra hassle but if it means saving $80 on your tax filing then lots of people will jump through the additional hoops. And TBH having printed and mailed my tax returns before it's not that onerous.

Ah, that makes sense. Appreciate it.

That's what I've always done. I used TurboTax a few times back when it first came out. At that time it was a standalone program that you bought on a CD. It ran on your computer and it generated forms that you printed and mailed in. No internet required, your data never left your computer.

Once it became a "cloud" platform I didn't trust Intuit to keep my data private or not to use it for their own purposes. Ever since then I've done my taxes on paper. It's not difficult for someone with W2 and even self-employment income. For a more complicated situation it could be, but at that point you probably have an accountant anyway.

It’ll become a paid offering lol. What’s the license?

Its a custom license apparently, but its public domain for the US.

https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/LICENSE

Was required to be open-sourced from the SHARE IT act. One of the most common-sense bills in a long time.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9566

I don't think the second half of your comment is accurate.

Works created by the federal government have always been in the public domain, i.e. ineligible for copyright protection. The SHARE IT Act has nothing to do with that. (Of course, government works may be protected or restricted in other ways, such as classification.)

The SHARE IT Act doesn't say anything about releasing software publicly, nor does it say anything about open source licensing. It applies to software that is created by the federal government itself or by contractors It requires the source code to be made available to the government and stored in an appropriate source code repository, such that it can potentially be shared between agencies.

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