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The Software Politics Of 2004's Presidential Race
mjamil writes "The NYT(free registration required) has an article talking about the polarized use of OSS in the building of campaign Web sites. Specifically, it states that the sites for John Kerry (Democratic candidate for President) and the Democratic National Committee are built using OSS, while the site for President Bush's re-election campaign uses IIS. Linus and ESR are quoted. It's an interesting look at how even presidential politics are no longer immune to the free software war (free as in beer)." (David Brunton, pictured in the article, wrote to say "Now I'm going to go call my mom... won't she be proud? For all those girl geeks and gay geeks out there, I'm already taken, but it is an awful nice picture, isn't it?")
1. "Free as in beer" - The same as if you were given a beer to drink and you didnt pay for it.
:)
2. "Free as in speech" - This is when you pay for the beer, but its priceless to hear you talk when drunk
Get a beer first, only THEN will you understand :)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell
Try http://georgewbush.org/ instead.
But not all girl geeks are straight, dammit!
I find it more likely that the Kerry organisation chose OSS simply to lower their running costs. The Bush camp has more cash to burn ($200m) and so can afford to go for a more user friendly OS(I'm not trolling,Windows IS more user friendly). I wouldn't have put it past MS to have 'donated' serveral hundred licences and server software to the current administartion.
.NET will probobly crumble at the first YRO slashdot headline.
Though the situation in the Bush camp does seem to compliment their politics, I doubt Kerry and his followers give a danm about the OSS/CLSS debate. They just went with the cheapest option.
Of course they will benefit from ability to handle higher email loads and site requests. If the bush site is an aspx, then
May the Maths Be with you!
So, after all these years....when I finally found a girl on /. she's not straight. Damn!
Deap breath....k, just keep searching...
Indeed most beer is neither free as in beer nor free as in speech. However you more often find beer which is free as in beer than beer which is free as in speech.
...
Now if you drink lots of free beer it may help you doing free speech, although then there's a danger that your speech is actually sense-free
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
...but I like how the first line in the post's text with the headline including "software" and "politics" contains "registration required" simply to view the article.
*giggle*