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Full Story at Slate
Read More: Executive Office Of The President (EOP), Leveraging Resources, Digital, Gov 2.0
Last Saturday, the Obama White House completed a changeover of the WhiteHouse.gov website to run on the open-source platform Drupal. The much-ballyhooed switch was hailed as a giant leap for openness, abandoning as it did the propriety content management system used by the Bush Administration.
But is the shoop over to Drupal a disaster in the making? Chris Wilson over at Slate thinks so, citing five big reasons why Drupal may be duping its champions. His critique is a bit thin on examples, but peppered with analogies comparing the software to gov employees. Example: "If Drupal were an employee of the federal government, it would be the person who answers the phone at Immigration and Customs Enforcement who is unable to help you and unable to tell you who can."
That's not to say Wilson is barking up the wrong tree. Recovery.gov was a droopy Drupal site for many months before recently being re-launched with an $18 million proprietary back-end system. (Read OhMyGov's interview with the developers here). We'll all be watching closely to see whether the move to Drupal works out better for the White House than it did for the Recovery.gov team.
Have experiences with Drupal? Think the White House is doing the right thing? Let us know.
Ben October 29, 2009 1:28 PM
"unable to help you and unable to tell you who can." I'll answer: I will help and so will several thousand other drupal admins/develelopers/maintainers.
ceejayoz October 30, 2009 12:16 PM
Pity he's full of shit. ceejayoz.com/.../why-chriswilsondc-is-full-of-shit-about-drupal
Jeremy October 30, 2009 1:22 PM
"re-launched with an $18 million proprietary back-end system" hahahaha me thinks you lost credibility on your government watchdog status when you cite an 18 million dollar contract to build a website as the better option. That site better s*#k me off every morning & night!
"re-launched with an $18 million proprietary back-end system"
hahahaha
me thinks you lost credibility on your government watchdog status when you cite an 18 million dollar contract to build a website as the better option. That site better s*#k me off every morning & night!
stephani November 8, 2009 2:02 PM
I think it's a great move, open-source is repeatedly more secure and more stable than its closed-code peers. The open-source community is always working toward perfecting code, decreasing vulnerabilities and improving features. They don't take vacations and don't sleep, the community is working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year(366 during a leap year!). For the open-source factor alone, I'm in support of it.
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