From Tom Tomorrow -- All the Rage:

Open thread below...

If you have gone to whitehouse.gov since Saturday you may not have noticed any real changes. On the outside this is true, but underneath the hood they just replaced the entire engine and drive train.

When President Obama took over at 1600 Pennsylvania one of the first things he did was order the people who manage the White House website to investigate new software. The outcome was a move from expensive and clunky proprietary software to a very familiar open source system – Drupal.

Now I don’t expect all our readers to know what Drupal is, but actually it should be very familiar. Drupal is the same software that powers Crooks and Liars. The software is extremely robust and can be extended beyond you imagination through contributed modules. In the coming months you will see more examples of this as we start rolling out our latest updated that includes countless new features to better engage you – the C&L community.

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Open source software is everywhere. It runs not only this blog, but also our servers – as well as a mass majority of the blogosphere and web. The software doesn’t cost anything to use, or even alter, but it has been the foundation of an industry estimated to be valued at $60 billion. Imagine something that is essentially free generating tons of revenue. That idea would make George Bush’s head explode.

Now we are in a new era with a new President and it looks like he is open to taking our governments mindset out of the 90s and bring them into the new millennium when it comes to software choices:

The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products.

The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.

He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration.

"It's intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software," he said.

"Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money."

You can hear lobbyists from companies like Microsoft flocking on D.C. already to try and stop this. Hopefully they fail, because open source software is the way to go. Supporting a growing industry like this is something synonymous with economic stimulus. Small start up companies that specialize in different open source applications could see themselves grow by receiving support and development requests from the U.S. government.

This is Bob Morris of Politics in the Zeros on my last day guest blogging. Big thanks to Nicole and bluegal for their help. I've known John and Mike since way before blogging and it's been great watching C&L turn into the influential powerhouse that it is.

Florida schools parked their money in a state-run fund that "invested" in risky SIVs. Now the fund is near-bankrupt , the state has halted withdrawals, and schools can't make their payrolls. The blameless are getting maimed by the credit crisis.

In the end, will it be She Who Is Inevitable? Should we practice saying "Madame President"?

With a Cola-Cola plant in Atlanta sucking up huge amounts of water and a nuclear reactor and coal power plant down the river doing the same, the southeast faces major problems because of the drought. How do you cut back? And is the world ready to do so?

What the U.S. can learn from Uganda.

Finally (tooting own horn), here's my review of John Robb's groundbreaking book, "Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization." Welcome to open source decentralized swarming warfare or, as he puts it "what if warfare was reinvented and nobody bothered to tell the Pentagon?" It might change the way you look at the world. It did for me.

For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the orgy of self-congratulation that is OSM™, let me quickly highlight this section from their pressrelease yesterday :

Open Source Media currently features content from more than 70 bloggers worldwide, primarily focused on political and current events. However, the goal is to expand its scope to eventually include all forms of coverage, from local news to pop culture to sports, fashion, food, hobbies and more.

Along with this bit from the National Review's puff piece earlier this week :

Bloggers don't work nine-to-five; they post around-the-clock. They don't file one story a day; they might update dozens of times throughout a 24-hour period. And they are everywhere. The New York Times has 53 bureaus worldwide (16 of them in the New York area). Pajamas Media plans to easily top that number, and at a fraction of the cost.

Wow. With $3.5 million in funding, more than 70 contributors, and a 24/7 posting schedule, I'm sure the guys in pajamas are blogging up a storm, right? Well, only if you consider five posts a storm. By comparison, The Huffington Post had 65 posts in its first day.
I guess it must be hard to pat yourself on the back and type at the same time.

^{Posted by Greg from Thethe/>Talent Show.}