Open Source Movement Finds Friends at the White House

Over the weekend, the White House switched from its Bush-era closed source content management system (CMS) to the popular Drupal (news, site) open source platform. The project reflects Drupal's growing acceptance with more sophisticated web operations and the U.S. government's inclination to leverage open source software.

Massachusetts-based Acquia — the relatively young commercial entity started by Drupal project founder, Dries Buyeart, and also one of the founding members of Open Source for America — was on board as a project subcontractor.

At a practical level,  initial comments suggest that it is pretty much business as usual for the White House website. If anything, the search function will run faster and content updating should be easier for the maintainers. Looking forward, the switch will enable those contracted with running the White House site (General Dynamics Information Technology) to add some of the smart features that the Drupal community comes up with, if appropriate.