Slashdot Log In
Free Software for Politics
Posted by
michael
on Tue Sep 30, 2003 01:48 PM
from the unintended-consequences dept.
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!"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Free Software for Politics
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 554 comments
(Spill at 50!) | Index Only
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Well... (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.colingregorypalmer.net/)
That's a gnu-candidate thank you.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://dotfuturemanifesto.blogspot.com/)
Almost but not quite as irrelevant as the brand of Web server the candidate runs. I still think that Bush is going to really regret doing that stupid Top Gun stunt next November. It isn;t the uniform, its the way you wear it.
I see one big issue for the Open Source Community in the next election and it is not promoting open source. The big issue is PATENTS and Dean is at least listening to the right people here - Larry Lessig.
We don't want much here, we just want the USPTO to actually apply in practice the principles that it claims to apply.
Novel should mean novel, do something on the Internet that has been done for 20 years is not novel.
Prior review get rid of the secrecy in the process, all applications to be subject to a one year protest period, same as the Europeans do
You have to invent it there are a ridiculous number of speculative patents filled where the inventor has actually invented nothing. Typical cases are in the genetics field where the first person to sequience a gene often files a patent that claims the use of the gene to solve every imaginable ailment before the 'inventor' knows anything about what the gene does
Anyone care to claim a bigger priority? This is a platform that everyone can agree on from Redmond WA to Cambridge MA.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Meanwhile, it appears that Dean wisely changed from windows 2000 to freebsd [netcraft.com] whereas Clark is using Linux [netcraft.com]. Which will win? :)
And of course the Evil One is running Windows. [netcraft.com] Surprise surprise!
Let's hope the best free software candidate wins!
More canidates should do this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Holy shit (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://dotfuturemanifesto.blogspot.com/)
Actually this is not excluded by Einstein, just that we have no idea how to do it. The key is the concept of space which is actually mutuable. There are ways that we already know about that can warp space in absolutely infintesimal ways. Could there be a way to do it on a large scale? Possibly. There are serious scientists who consider such problems.
Faster than light travel is certainly a much longer shot than fussion, we know that fussion is possible and the sun provides an existence proof. But faster than light is probably a much easier shot than building a missile defense system that can't be circumvented by the opposition. None of the proposals made so far work and none is capable even in theory of counteracting existing countermeasures such as the UK Chevalene warhead design that is so old it was recently withdrawn from service as obsolete.
What we are seeing here is an example of a classical smear attack. I strongly suspect that the original question was asked for the sole purpose of being able to trash Clark as a loony with an out of context quote. Karl Rove and his smear-team did the exact same thing with Gore last time round, they took a bunch of out of context quotes from Gore's ecology book and used them to claim that Gore was some sort of nut. In fact the prediction Gore made about the possible rise of the hydrogen economy and the decline of the internal combustion engine is far from fruitcake, thats why the Whitehouse included $100 million for H2 power research in the last budget.
Re:Clark IS a loony (Score:4, Informative)
(http://thecraftstudio.com/bcboy)
Re:More canidates should do this (Score:5, Insightful)
We know that faster-than-light travel is contrary to our current best effort at producing a consistent body of laws to describe nature, but those laws are based on observations accurate within certain parameters and realms. But we certainly can't say what's really dictated by some magical immutable laws of physics.
Re:More canidates should do this (Score:5, Funny)
How can he have vision about travelling faster than the speed of light? Isn't that a contradiction?
Re:More canidates should do this (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe I've watched too much Babylon 5, but I just can't get read the phrase 'President Clark' without looking around for Nightwatch.
Wouldn't it now be... (Score:3, Funny)
Shhhh, don't tell Stallman or we'll never hear the end of it!
Dean really needs to appear in Interviews on /. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday February 24 2005, @11:27AM)
Re:Dean really needs to appear in Interviews on /. (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 18 2004, @05:22PM)
And while it'd be cool if he did an interview, I don't think he exactly *needs* to...
I am impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://antholog.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 29 2004, @10:01AM)
It does beg the question--will a Dean presidency be geek friendly? Will it turn back the DMCA and scale back software patents? I'd like to know more, but I'm optimistic for the first time in a long time.
Re:I am impressed (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.wilcoxon.org/~sewilco | Last Journal: Monday November 26, @11:31PM)
Isn't it enough that we've already lined him up for a slashdotting?
Dean Gets It (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?p
and Net Advisory Net, including Lessig
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?p
I submitted this, but it wasn't posted, yet the story about the ridiculous spider case mod was posted. Hmm.
Obligatory invention joke (Score:5, Funny)
So 3 years or so from now it migth be common knowledge that Howard Dean invented GNU, the weblog, and Linux too but (kinda) lost the elections. That and his house (to Darl for stealing everything from SCO).
Seriously though, nice initiative but it also smells a bit of, well, I'm sure you get the point.
Re:Obligatory invention joke (Score:4, Informative)
The Great Thing About This (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.trellon.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 04 2007, @07:57PM)
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.
Brad About Dean (9/10/2003) (Score:5, Interesting)
If you go to the Drupal [drupal.org] 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!
Since all the links are down... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/~GillBates0 | Last Journal: Tuesday July 10, @04:36PM)
Wait a sec.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll be interesting to see if any competing campaigns take it up and use it for their communities.
Impressive: (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ | Last Journal: Monday December 03, @03:01AM)
O.K., so Dean is smart. This is one of the most impressive grass roots campaigns I have ever seen and he has my vote. Assuming Dean is elected President, given his background, perhaps we could have some open source solutions to the health care crisis to enable physicians and hospitals to reduce costs associated with all of the electronic medical records problems that are cropping up.
The ideal pair? Dean and Clark. A thinker and an individual who gets things done. What a concept!
Re:Impressive: (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.thetao.info/tao/whitecloud1.htm)
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
Nice and all... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/)
Free Software Voting Machines (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://edgewise.pycs.net/ | Last Journal: Friday February 13 2004, @12:28PM)
Can't call him an open-source candidate... (Score:3, Funny)
Bush campaign releases GNU/WMD to garner support (Score:5, Funny)
(http://wolf.cheats4u...st/index.php?ref=893 | Last Journal: Thursday January 08 2004, @10:14PM)
"We hope that our supporters use the smallpox virus in a way that will support our common goals" stated White House insider Karl Rove. "We think that the time has come to deal with the infidel huns who are attempting to thwart our ultimate goal of establishing a reactionary, protestant theocracy with President Bush as Ayatollah. Using smallpox in areas where there are concentrations of liberal and Democratic voters will surely help us to win an outright majority in the next election. Jew York, here comes Itchy and Scratchy!" Rove went on to describe the plan to trade smallpox-infected blankets to residents of New York City in exchange for wampum.
Democrats in Congress criticized the move, calling it cynical at best and mass murder at worst. In the Senate today, Ted Kennedy (D-MA) spoke to the issue, calling the use of biological weapons by Republican campaigners, "worse than anything than Daddy ever did, and that's saying a lot." Senator Kennedy was later found garroted in his chambers in what appears to be the work of a lone assassin. See our related story for information on the investigation, including the appointment of Chief Justice Rehnquist to a commission to investigate the assassination of Senator Kennedy.
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) chastized the President for the move as well, calling it "barbaric". Senator Clinton was last seen ushering her husband, former President Bill Clinton, into a limosine bound for his office in Harlem. "Bill needs to be in the right place to do the most good during this crisis." Commentators noted that Senator Clinton did not seem alarmed that her husband was going into one of the hardest-hit areas. Staffer John McClintock was quoted as saying that [Senator Clinton] seemed to be "strangely peaceful" as former President Clinton left for Harlem and that "she danced a jig similar to the one Hitler did when his troops defeated the French."
GF.
[just laugh people, just laugh]
Probable reason the site is down... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.almaw.com/)
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!
THIS IS NOT A TROLL!! (Score:3, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/my/amigos | Last Journal: Monday November 10 2003, @01:14PM)
Guys, I got a problem. This isn't related to this topic exclusively, but for ALL Gnu articles here... Okay, here it is. The icon for "Gnu is not Unix" here at Slashdot doesn't really look like a Gnu at all. It looks like a giant penis carrying a security blanket. Really. Take a close look at it. Are those two big red balls supposed to be feet? What does that logo MEAN?
We need to change that logo to something that doesn't have hidden meanings. I suggest the typical Gnu head (no pun intended) that RMS uses on his website [gnu.org].
/. Interview is the perfect way (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Serious omission in the story (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.almaw.com/)
That's nothing... (Score:5, Funny)
Betterly Formatted (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.darktide.nu/nwa/zack)
Articles: http://drupal.org/node/view/2267 [drupal.org]
Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59497,0
Dan Gillmore http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/65
Reason Online http://www.reason.com/links/links081303.shtml [reason.com]
Hesie Online (german) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-26.08.03-0
Dean's campaign manager is Linux savvy.. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.cowmix.com/)
(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.
Dean's "Internet Principles" (Score:5, Informative)
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 . . .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My Experience with Open Source in Politics (Score:3, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday August 24, @08:58PM)
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:
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:Dean Win Would Guarantee Bush Victory (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.webolutionary.com/)
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!"
Faulty Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://firsttube.com/)
The system works properly if everyone votes for whom they feel is the best candidate. Curbed voting like this puts less qualified, but more well known, candidates in office (probably why Bush is in office in the first place).
While I get where you're going, you're essentially contributing to the demise of independants or third parties. You're saying "It's no use, so don't bother."
You have to have some faith in democracy, even though it doesn't always work right.