Free Software for Politics

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday September 30, 2003 @06:48AM from the unintended-consequences dept.

kevin lyda writes "The Howard Dean campaign is releasing software for web-based communities under the GNU GPL. The project apparently is based on drupal. See here for more info, and here for the software. Regardless if you're for Dean, against Dean, or you're not an American, it's great to see an American politician on the national level using and promoting free software. I wonder if RMS thought he'd see a U.S. presidential candidate releasing stuff under the GPL when he founded GNU 20 years ago!"

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Dean Gets It by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-30 06:53 · Score: 5, Informative

The more significant story is Dean's Internet Principles

http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pa ge name=InternetPrinciples

and Net Advisory Net, including Lessig

http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pa ge name=NAN

I submitted this, but it wasn't posted, yet the story about the ridiculous spider case mod was posted. Hmm.
1. Re:Dean Gets It by ScottSpeaks! · 2003-09-30 07:25 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Maybe if you got the URLs correct:
  http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?page name=InternetPrinciples
  http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?page name=NAN
  Using the URLs as you posted them, you just get redirected to the site's main page.
He does not talk about time travel by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-30 06:57 · Score: 2, Informative

he talks about faster than light travel
Since all the links are down... by GillBates0 · 2003-09-30 06:57 · Score: 4, Informative

Here's the Freshmeat page for the project.

--
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Re:Obligatory invention joke by bombadillo · 2003-09-30 07:10 · Score: 4, Informative

Al Gore did more for the internet than any other politician. Just look at the Internet Societies page. You will notice that from a political stand point he did take the initiative to create the internet. With out his help the internet as we know it would have been delayed. Also, he never said he "Invented the Internet". Al Gore said that he took the initiative to create the internet. Meaning that he championed the technology.
Re:Impressive: by wytcld · 2003-09-30 07:13 · Score: 4, Informative

Dean and Clark. A thinker and an individual who gets things done.

Dean got a lot done as Vermont governor - went from deficit to surplus in the one state whose constitution doesn't mandate a balanced budget; provided health insurance for everyone under 18; and generally took middle-of-the road stances on hot-button issues like road building and development that infuriated Democrats in the Legislature. The guy's actually very conservative on many issues - he just does conservative right, fairly (what's fair about disallowing gay unions?) and compassionately.

Clark - degree in economics, Rhodes scholar and first in his West Point class ... he's the 'thinker,' right? Dean says he has called Clark frequently, mostly for foreign policy advice. It's a fair be that if either comes in first, the other's on the ticket. They may be a tag team.

--
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Re:Previous open-source appeal flops... by frankie · 2003-09-30 07:19 · Score: 2, Informative

his entire web presence was built on closed-system technology developed by Microsoft.
That's simply untrue, and everything2 needs to be corrected. Algore2000.com ran Apache+PHP on Linux (1.3.9 in 1999, 1.3.12 in 2000).
FWIW: Bush2000.com ran IIS/W2K, BuchananReform.org ran IIS/NT4, VoteNader.org ran Apache/BSD.
Probable reason the site is down... by almaw · 2003-09-30 07:23 · Score: 4, Informative

It's entirely likely that Dean's site doesn't have the caching module enabled (which it isn't by default). With it, there's only one SQL hit per page. Without it, the entire page gets built for every page-view (slooooow).

Drupal.org has caching enabled, and therefore hasn't fallen over (yet). But we don't have all that much bandwidth, so it's being *very* slow at the moment.

I've been developing Drupal for a few months now. It has a very active developer community and continues to get more flexible and modular with each successive release. It's much more extensible and better architected than (for example) PostNuke.

We're also coming up on a new release (4.3) which should go RC in the next few days. If you're thinking of trying it out, I'd recommend either waiting for that, or getting latest CVS tarball - things are much nicer than 4.2!
Betterly Formatted by zrosener · 2003-09-30 07:49 · Score: 5, Informative

DeanSpace development comunity - Website : http://DeanSpace.org
Articles: http://drupal.org/node/view/2267
Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59497,00 .html
Dan Gillmore http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/650 1101.htm
Reason Online http://www.reason.com/links/links081303.shtml
Hesie Online (german) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-26.08.03-00 1/
Re:A slashdotting on the last day of the quarter? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-30 07:51 · Score: 1, Informative

MOD PARENT UP. The Dean Campaign is trying to raise 1 Million dollars online today. It was already getting a lot of traffic from blog addicts. The last thing it needed today was a slashdotting. I bet the server admins are going crazy right now.

Also, the Official Blog runs on Moveable Type, not drupal. Only the deanspace.org project is drupal-based.
Re:Dean Win Would Guarantee Bush Victory by seanr1978 · 2003-09-30 08:18 · Score: 3, Informative

That's bullsh**. Howard Dean is loved by the left, but he's not that far to the left. He's nowhere near as liberal as Dennis Kucinich or Dick Gephardt (who both chide him for being too moderate!), for example. Dean is really not much further left than Clinton was, especially when you look at his record as governor of Vermont. He ballanced the budget 11 years in a row, set up a rainy day fund that has kep their budget balanced even now (unlike here in Virginia! *GAG*), and has a perfect A rating from the NRA due to his policies in Vermont and his stated belief that most gun laws should be left to the states.
Does that sound like the left wing freak Lieberman and the bogus DLC want you to think he is? Note also all the republicans actively supporting Dean (he's doing for the Dems what McCain did for the reps four years ago, only much better).
Karl Rove said he wanted Dean to win, but Rove is an ignorant son of a mother who is about to learn the meaning of "Be careful what you wish for!"
Re:Impressive: by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-30 08:19 · Score: 1, Informative

>>It's a fair bet that if either comes in first, the other's on the ticket. They may be a tag team.

I tend to be quite conservative, but I think even I'd vote for that team.
Dean? He spamed me by ferrocene · 2003-09-30 08:25 · Score: 1, Informative

I'm not going to vote for a spammer. Unsolicited is unsolicited.

--
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
Dean's "Internet Principles" by meatball_mulligan · 2003-09-30 08:55 · Score: 5, Informative
From the Dean website...
Principles for an Internet Policy
This nation - and not just this nation - needs to have an honest conversation about what's real, possible and desirable when it comes to the gift of the Internet. Conversations need shared ground. Here are the beliefs we think should guide the development of a fact-based federal policy. We put these forward as part of a continuing Great American Conversation . . .
1. No one owns the Internet
  
  The Internet does not exist for the unique benefit of any group or economic interest. It is ours as citizens of this country and as inhabitants of this planet.
2. Everyone should be connected
  
  The social, economic, and educational advantages of being on the Internet are real. Universal Internet access regardless of economic or geographic position should be a federal goal.
3. The Internet's value comes from its openness
  
  The Internet provides a new possibility of global access to an unprecedented sum of human knowledge. It is the responsibility of this generation to make sure that knowledge is available for innovation in business and culture.
4. The Internet's openness should be promoted
  
  The Internet was initially designed as a way of moving bits without preferring some bits to others. Network architects call this principle "end-to-end" networking. That way, anyone with a good idea - or a bad one - can build it and see if it works. This openness is essential to the Internet's value as a marketplace of innovation and a public square for ideas.
5. The Internet is a democracy of voices, not primarily a broadcast medium
  
  Although the Internet certainly can be used to broadcast messages and programs from one spot to hundreds of millions of others, its most important effect socially and economically is its transformation of the broadcast model. Rather than "freedom of the press belonging to those who own one," everyone now can reach everyone else. The Internet is encouraging people to speak up, in their own voice, about what matters to them. This empowerment of human voice and conversation is profoundly in line with the ideals of American democracy.
6. The Internet is not perfectible
  
  The Internet is not perfect and it never will be. It is a global network providing possibility of connecting to geniuses and pickpockets and worse. We need to work to root out illegal and malicious uses of the Internet and the exploitation of children and other vulnerable members of our society.
7. The Internet is just at the beginning
  
  Although the Internet has connected 700,000,000 people worldwide, it is just at its beginning. We need to recognize that no one yet knows the true potential of the Internet. And we need to support the political and technological policies that will help the Internet grow to its true capacity as a force for democracy world-wide.
Re:More canidates should do this by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-30 09:03 · Score: 1, Informative

There has been some work in producing communications channels by entangling electrons. Likewise, the natural forces (such as gravity and weak electron forces) have been descibed as moving faster than light. More recent studies have attempted to measure the speed of such force propogation with varying degrees of success.

Furthermore, there is a big gray area in quantum physics that describes the motion of electrons. That motion has been described in many ways. Mathematically, it is represented by complex numbers. I have heard thoughts on the physical behavior that describe this motion to be "dimensional folding", "space-time warping", faster-than-light movement, teleportation (which may turn out to be equivalent to faster-than-light movement), or even time travel.
Re:Clark IS a loony by bcboy · 2003-09-30 10:26 · Score: 3, Informative

Errr.... hey clueboy, all of the 'Gore lies' were manufactured by the press. His statements on Love Canal, working on a farm, Love Story, and etc. were all true. He was widely misquoted by right-wing liars to give the impression that he was exaggerating.
My Experience with Open Source in Politics by temojen · 2003-09-30 10:49 · Score: 2, Informative
In 2002 I developed a voter contact management system (phone bank) for a municipal campaign in a medium sized Canadian city (pop 78,000). It was based on Linux/Apache/PHP/PostgreSQL, and was only accessible to volunteers within the campaign office LAN.

Some things I learned from the Experience are:
1. Many users do not understand the concept of logging out, so use timeouts
2. Database connections are expensive, and there are a limited amount allowed, so use only one website user (in your DBMS) and persistant connections. Or use one DBMS user for each level of access allowed. Keep user access restrictions in the web application tier.
3. There are sufficient interested volunteers with Cable or DSL to warrant allowing access from the Internet (with prudent precautions like rate limiting). 4 phone lines is not enough, and many volunteers do not want to come down to the campaign office. All the volunteers tend to want to work in the phone bank at the same time.
4. (non-competing) Candidates from the opposite end of the (left-right) political spectrum will volunteer for your campaign and stick to the script if you agree on issues key to your community.
5. The settings on your workstations will be tampered with (innocently or otherwise) if they are useing an operating system that allows this. Donated computers should recieve a new install of an OS thast supports access restrictions (ie Linux or Win2K/XP, if you care to pay the liscense fees). You should tell the person donating the computer that they will recieve it back with a wiped hard-drive.
6. Someone who opposes you will email a copy of Sub7 installer (or worse) to everyone listed as a contact (candidate, campaign manager, official agent, etc) on your public website. Get server-side email virus scanning, or an ISP who has it (we did).
7. Some of our opponents were not above vandalizing our signs. There were frequenly areas of the city where all of the signs belonging to any candidate on our side of the spectrum were vandalized.
8. If you make a web based system, volunteers can be trained to use it very fast even if they've never used a computer before, so long as they're not afraid of computers.
9. If you make a web based system, once the web browser is open it makes little difference from a usability standpoint whether the workstation is Linux, Windows, or Macintosh (we used all of these). Where it does matter is in preventing tampering or acccidental misconfiguration.
10. Begin searching for donated hardware early.
I'm hopeing to apply what I've learned and what I've learned since to building a system suitable for the next federal election.It'll probably be a combination of Servlets and domain model objects, PostgreSQL, and PL/pgSQL stored procedures.
Re:Clark IS a loony by bcboy · 2003-09-30 11:16 · Score: 2, Informative

So tell me, what has Clark lied about?

I've seen George Will lie about Clark lying. Will cut-n-paste the transcript from the June 15th Meet the Press to construct statements Clark never said. I've seen Rush repeat Will's lie in the WSJ. I haven't seen Clark lie.

The transcript for the Meet the Press episode is available online.

http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/927000.asp?cp1=1