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Free Software for Politics

Posted by ryuzaki0 on 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!"

9 of 554 comments (clear)

  1. More canidates should do this by deanj · · Score: 4, Interesting

    More candidates should do this. Frankly, I'd be interesting in hearing more about General Clarke's ideas on time travel. (Follow the link... he actually talks about this. I kid you not).

  2. Dean really needs to appear in Interviews on /. by stevesliva · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There was a call for this before... Slashdot and Dean staff, are you listening?

    --
    Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
    1. Re:Dean really needs to appear in Interviews on /. by syphax · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I had asked my good friend, who works on the campaign, about this last time; he said Dean's a busy dude, and after the Lessig blog had some other constituencies to cover before he'd have a chance to circle back.

      And while it'd be cool if he did an interview, I don't think he exactly *needs* to...

      --
      Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
  3. The Great Thing About This by techsoldaten · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The great thing about this software is that it could ultimately cut down on the cost of campaigns, lessening the need for big political donors and their influence on politics.

    A former employer of mine was involved in developing Web communities for conservative clients, and the bill for his services is huge even by 1999 standards.

  4. Brad About Dean (9/10/2003) by Fedhax · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you go to the Drupal website, you'll see that Brad posted some brief comments from his interaction with the Dean campaign (9/10/2003).

    (Taken from Drupal.org)

    I met with a Presidential campaign yesterday. They asked me to advise in general on their web site, but when we got into our discussion, I learned they were doing the static html thing. So, I demoed three CMS' to them - Drupal, Typo3, and a fork of Backend my company developed. They were blown away by all of them,. But I steered them to Drupal for speed of setup, flexibility and features. As a matter of fact, if you compare the features to what Howard Dean has on his site, you are basically setup with everything he has.

    Having managed campaigns for a living in a previous life, I realized that if a Presidential campaign is this far behind technologically, then there are likely hundreds of candidates running now and next year that will not have a system in place. Additionally, most do not have the budget of this campaign and are unable to hire developers, designers, and writers, but know it is necessary.

    Regardless, it is quite impressive to see an open project get this kind of press (Presidential campaigns?), and the modifications given back to the community?! Ye gods! w00t!

  5. /. Interview is the perfect way by Phoenix666 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    to directly communicate our views on technology policy to government. Most of our representatives couldn't even tell you what the DMCA is, much less give two shakes about why it's bad. They're in the pockets of special interests.

    But it occurs to me that the Dean campaign is the best shot we have to turn the fight for online freedoms around. They're an organization that's volunteer-run, so it's not beholden to special interests. They use OSS to run their site and various tools, and now they're open-sourcing their stuff, so they're going to understand why free software is so important. Finally, as a tech-driven campaign they're predisposed to sympathize with our take on issues like privacy, frivolous patents, etc.

    And as far as I know, they haven't yet expressed any kind of position on tech issues. So a /. interview would be the perfect opportunity to imprint their campaign and let them know we're out here.

    --
    Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
  6. Serious omission in the story by almaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The real link to the site for the community behind this is deanspace.org. The deanspace software is based on drupal 4.2. It'd be nice if the developers over there contributed back to the Drupal codebase - it's dangerously close to a fork, and needn't be. The upcoming Drupal 4.3 has some features 4.2 is lacking, and is much more user-friendly. It'd be a pity to lose these when a fork isn't necessary.

  7. Dean's campaign manager is Linux savvy.. by cowmix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, used to be an advisor to Progeny
    (a commercial version of Debian started by the Debian founders). Joe
    is very tech and Linux savvy. He has stated that the way he has been running
    the Dean campaign was inspired by how Open Source software works.
    I have been pretty active with the Dean folks for a few months and
    I think what he is saying is no BS, it really seems very open
    and two way like Open Source software.

  8. Re:Well... by rifter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Meanwhile, it appears that Dean wisely changed from windows 2000 to freebsd whereas Clark is using Linux. Which will win? :)

    And of course the Evil One is running Windows. Surprise surprise!

    Let's hope the best free software candidate wins!