Blog: Pete Loshin

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Politics and Open Source

Open source vs proprietary software is more than a business issue: it's very much a political issue. Politicians who take campaign contributions from every other industry are just as happy to accept money from the software industry as well. Microsoft spends as heavily as any other major corporation.

But politicians also have to use software, the same as businesses and individuals. So which presidential candidates use Windows/IIS for their campaign web servers, and which run Linux/Apache? Check out Douglas Karr's summary of the candidates' OS, webserver and web hosting service choices.

I'm torn over how to interpret these results: just how deeply involved are the candidates in making the choice of Windows vs Linux/BSD? Do they really micromanage to that extent? Do the choices reflect campaign contributions from Microsoft (or other companies)? Or do the represent the skill/knowledge of the IT people chosen by the candidates (or their deputies)?

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