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Posts from February 2009

Open Source Government

Posted by Peter Baumgartner on February 19, 2009. Filed under open source

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 ...

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