Jan 19 2012: Great question: I would open source government or at least parts of it. Legislation could definitely stand to be open-sourced. I don't know exactly how it could be done, the process would have have ground rules, like Wikipedia's NPOV policy and self-corrective processes. Each bill can be iterate through hundreds of revisions, each law could leverage previous laws by reference (reusable code). Elected representatives would still vote on the bill, but the open sourcing the process of writing the bill should help us avoid making laws that are unconstitutional, short-sighted, or ill-conceived in the first place.
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A comment on Conversation: If you could open-source one piece of technology, what would you choose and why?