Legalize, GStack and 140 comments on Hacker News in three hours
GStack: an excellent tool
I discovered GStack through a LinkedIn post. It's a tool from Y Combinator designed to help build projects. I found it excellent. It's one of those tools that when you try it, you think: this is going to help anyone who wants to ship a project. Regardless of your technical level or what stage you're at. GStack guides you, gives you direction, and saves you time on decisions that would normally block you.
I used it to analyze a project that had been spinning in my head for years. And what came out of that analysis completely changed my approach.
Legalize: laws deserve version control
I've been thinking about something for years that seems obvious to me: the problem of law versioning is something that software engineering solved long ago with Git. Every time a developer changes code, what changed is recorded, along with when and why. You can compare any version with any other. You can go back. You can see the complete evolution of a file.
None of that happens with laws. They're constantly reformed, but tracking those changes is surprisingly hard. Official sources publish consolidated versions with no easy way to compare them. Commercial providers charge hundreds of euros per month for access to version history. It's absurd.
So I decided to build it. Legalize turns official legislation into Git-versioned data. Each law is a Markdown file. Each reform is a commit. Want to see what changed in the Spanish Constitution in 2011? git diff. Want to see all reforms of a law? git log. Standard tools that any developer already knows, applied to a problem nobody had solved this way.
The Spain repository already has over 8,600 laws processed. France, the UK and Germany are on the way.
Open source, but with ambition
The project is completely open. All code and data are on GitHub for anyone to see, use and contribute to. But I'm not stopping there.
I'm going to build a website (legalize.dev) to see if the project can generate traffic, complement the work I'm already doing with BoletinClaro, and maybe even monetize it. It's a bet, but the bulletin processing engine I've already built gives me a solid foundation.
140 comments on Hacker News
Based on the analysis I did with GStack, the tool recommended I post on Hacker News, Y Combinator's forum. It seemed like a good idea: it's a technical community that appreciates open source projects and well-executed ideas.
I created the post. Three hours later it had 140 comments. Unheard of. I didn't expect it.
The conversation was rich: developers, lawyers, people from other countries asking when their legislation would be available. Constructive criticism, suggestions, people who'd been thinking the same thing for years. That kind of feedback can't be bought.
What's next?
I'm going to spend more time on Legalize. That kind of response is motivating. It's not just that people like the project: there's a real need behind it. People who work with laws every day and don't have decent tools to track changes.
We'll see where all this ends up. But the starting point is good: a real problem, a technical solution that works, open source code, and a community that's already paying attention.
The code is on GitHub: github.com/EnriqueLop/legalize