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White House Uses Drupal GNU for Open Source CMS
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Michael Barkoviak/Daily Tech
November 02, 2009
The Obama administration has been more
willing than previous administrations to implement open source
technology, as the new WhiteHouse.gov content management
software (CMS) system has been switched over to the open source
Drupal.
Open source is already used by the U.S. government
throughout numerous websites and departments, according
to tech guru Tim O-Reilly, but the White House using Drupal will
only help further its adoption. Furthermore, the U.S. chief
technology officer Aneesh Chopra has been mingling with open source
executives – and future government open source adoption is
expected.
After taking office, President Obama issued a
request for proposal (RFP) so the WhiteHouse website could be updated
depending on the technology available. Drupal, which operates under
the GNU General Public License, can be used, modified, and
redistributed by any engineer or user.
Although Drupal is
available for free, the White House will call on IT engineers to
maintain the site, as someone still must configure and maintain the
website. Since there are more than 500,000 websites utilizing
Drupal — including Nike, Yahoo and Warner Bros. – it has proven to
be a reliable program, which may help convince other companies and
government administrators to give it a try.
Although the Linux operating systems and other open source software packages have gained
marketshare among home users, open source has continually chipped
away in the enterprise market as well. The WhiteHouse switching
to Drupal may help convince other departments in the federal
government to begin working with open source on a broader scale, but
no fast transitions to open source are expected.
_© 2009, DailyTech
delpi99999
20 days ago
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HernanJV
20 days ago
38 comments
Open source seems like a good idea, but open source software is often developed by people who have a great idea, but do not always maintain their product. If the software is free their is no real incentive to fix it or improve it. I attempted to use FreeDos, but found that I could not connect to the internet, due to faulty software.