Open Source Government
February 19, 2009 | open source | No comments yet.
While browsing the source code of President Obama’s latest web initiative, recovery.org, I noticed something of interest.
<script type="text/javascript"> <!--//--><![CDATA[/ /><!-- jQuery.extend(Drupal.settings, { "basePath": "/" }); //--><!]]> </script>
Wow, this can’t be true. Can it?
$ curl -I http://www.recovery.gov HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: must-revalidate Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:36:57 GMT Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 ETag: "bc708fa7497a4a151dfc2076d5f804eb" Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:51:07 GMT Server: Apache Content-Length: 14103 X-WR-MODIFICATION: Content-Length Connection: keep-alive
Yep, it is. These little snippets aren’t much, but they speak volumes. The White House is using open source software, specifically the Apache web server, the Drupal CMS and the jQuery javascript framework.
So What?
Open source adoption is most definitely on the rise, but it still has a stigma attached. The idea that Microsoft and ...

