dslreports logo
 
    All Forums Hot Topics Gallery
spc
Search similar:


uniqs
852

Maxo
Your tax dollars at work.
Premium Member
join:2002-11-04
Tallahassee, FL

Maxo

Premium Member

Ubuntu Cloud powered the Obama campaign

said by »insights.ubuntu.com/clou ··· success/ :

US presidential elections grab the attention of people the world over. Media advertising, on-location campaigning, debates, TV appearances and voter engagement through social media, web sites, data polling are absolutely essential to a successful campaign. All those initiatives require a robust, agile IT infrastructure. In the most recent US election, the Obama team came up trumps not only in terms of a winning campaign but also with the much heralded IT infrastructure that powered that campaign. The heart of that infrastructure? Ubuntu, of course.

Any political differences aside, it's great to see open source gnu/linux taking a front seat in the technological hurdles of running what is possibly the most grueling and high-stakes race on this planet.

Selenia
Gentoo Convert
Premium Member
join:2006-09-22
Fort Smith, AR

Selenia

Premium Member

It has picked up steam. Love or hate using Android, it has brought the Linux kernel mainstream on mobile devices. Sure, much of the software, including the Google Apps platform, is closed source. The core is open source and Google writes their policies in such a way that it is relatively easy for open source apps to be published for their store(the defacto place for many mainstream users to get apps, though I love getting apps at XDA, myself). Nothing publishing it on your site and getting a few decent donations can't pay for, if you're a broke developer with a good idea for a project to launch, contribute to, or promote. Not any more than hosting one yourself(trust me), unless you use message boards like XDA developers.

Google offers their own support boards where you can link downloads to things you code, though XDA does it better. Downfall is fragmentation, which open source devs have been used to on the BSD/Linux platforms and got good at coding for it.

Android open source is growing in that direction, even though many of the first apps were terrible with phone compatibility. Not so true anymore. Only briefly after a new version release(if you get it right after release), as is true with the Linux kernel. Devs catch up a little bit after, so I see it as good to stay with stable in a production environment.

Only time Debian stable ever gave up on me and needed a reinstall since the 90s was when a hard drive crashed, which no OS survives unfortunately. Last time, I booted the machine back up in minutes(with no spare hard drive that would fit that machine properly) using a USB stick and mounted my usb hard drives for storage and ability to browse and save things.

Linux is flexible to include almost everywhere. Look at how gps units and wireless router use Linux kernel code. In terms of licensing, Google did brilliant for us open source people. Might be some ways they can't be trusted, possibly, but they have proven their commitment to spreading the word on open source and getting it implemented more widely.

We have fairly well gotten over fragmentation issues with the server and now the desktop. We will work around it more and more on other platforms. When manufacturers help, some commercial components may go in, but they can optimize Linux to run on their devices as they have the exact API and specs of their devices. I know Symbian is old, but I wish the community would have tried to evolve it more and see where it went, just for my own curiosity. It had a solid base for back then. I used to love my Nokia symbian phone.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212 to Maxo

Member

to Maxo
This is wonderful. I may not agree with the man on everything, but I love when governments use linux and other F/OSS.

No big surprise that they used a debian based OS, debian based OSes are boss.
intok (banned)
join:2012-03-15

1 recommendation

intok (banned) to Selenia

Member

to Selenia
I worked the field campaign, while the staffers used Thinkpads running Windows we had Ubuntu servers pushing a bank of thin clients for the volunteer phone bankers.

Worked out great.

FiReSTaRT
Premium Member
join:2010-02-26
Canada

FiReSTaRT

Premium Member

On the US governmental note, ACE is a big proponent source and due to the tight security that they need to run, they use Linux a lot and have released lots of good code into the open source ecosystem (the biggest one being GRASS). They're also the biggest user of the speex codec.

bluedemon
Reduce blood pressure. Ignore trolls
join:2000-07-29
Sunderland, MA

bluedemon to Maxo

Member

to Maxo
One of the other features of the Obama campaign was how cheap (i.e. efficient) they were. They had a much bigger ground game than Romney and yet their donations were roughly the same. They got more bang for their buck. When it comes to IT how do you do that? Use linux of course. It is cheap and beautifully engineered thanks to the open source dynamic. Of course to do this you need geeks rather than "consultants" working for you.
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

Kearnstd

Premium Member

And you can bring on more users without being worried you might not have bought enough seats from Microsoft. The admin just adds another user to the linux system and you are on the road again.