Does the Obama White House love Open Source?

Open Source lovers have reason to celebrate: The White House is using the Open Source content management system Drupal for its Recovery.org Web site, which is designed to let anyone know exactly where money from the recently passed stimulus package is being spent. Will there be more Open Source ahead in the White House?

Drupal is not exactly new to politics, nor to progressive, Democratic politics, for that matter. According to the Digidave blog, Drupal powered the Web sites of Howard Dean's campaign, as well as a variety of other political Web sites, including Votehillary.org, which was initially formed to get Hillary Clinton to run for President.

Why did the White House choose an Open Source solution rather than a proprietary one? One possibility, certainly, is that the software is free, and the administration wants to show that it's spending tax dollars wisely. But Drupal is also well-known for being very flexible, able to build Web sites quickly, has a large, involved community, and plenty of plug-in modules. So it's well-suited for putting together Web sites quickly.

Beyond that, though, will the White House use even more Open Source software? Can we expect to see OpenOffice.org used instead of Microsoft Office? Linux instead of Windows?

I think that's unlikely, given the massive installed base of Microsoft software in the federal government. Don't be surprised to see pockets of Open Source software, though, such as we're seeing at Recovery.org. But I don't expect to see Obama touting Linux at his next press conference.