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Comment by Groxx | Hacker News Reader

Awesome stuff. I couldn't find anywhere though: is this an 'official' project, or is it just someone who processed the XML forms into markdown?

Also, this: "All German citizens can easily find an up-to-date version of their laws online."

And it's only 130 megs of markdown when zipped (246 unzipped)! A mere 4,737,628 lines[1]! Surely you have time to read it, right? And therefore be a well-informed, law-abiding citizen?

I wonder how big America's would be :|

  [1] `wc -l $(find . -name '*.md')` admittedly very rough

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This is not an official project, "just" someone who registered the organization "Bundesregierung" ("Federal Government") at github and processed the official XMLs into markdown.

Yeah, sorry - 'just' is a relative term :) Didn't mean to belittle the act, it's still a big and interesting project.

Nitpick: no "Bundesregierung" (Government) but "Bundestag" (House of representatives).

My guess is that about 129 megs of those are tax laws.

I think this is where "German citizens can easily find an up-to-date version of their laws online" :

http://www.bgbl.de/Xaver/start.xav?startbk=Bundesanzeiger_BG...

It's not. You still have to have the complete text of the law and manually add the changes that are described in the Bundesanzeiger. It states for example something like "Change in BGB: Paragraph 123, section 45, change the word 'and' to 'and/or'. Only completely new texts would be printed in full.

The Bundesanzeiger is merely the last step in the law making process. First, the two law making institutions (Bundestag, Bundesrat) have to vote in favor of the law and the president has put his X under it. Only after the law is published in the Bundesanzeiger it takes effect.

Does the government publish a version where the deltas are already applied?

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