Will Linux Win the Next Presidential Election?

i_like_spam writes "Douglas Karr has posted an interesting breakdown, complete with bar charts, of the operating systems and server software used by the websites for 23 declared and undeclared presidential candidates. The breakdown shows that there is nearly an equal split between Linux and Windows servers among the whole candidate pool. More interesting, all of the Democratic candidates except for Hillary favor Linux or FreeBSD. 69% of the Republican candidates, in contrast, prefer Windows. Is this preference for OSS or Microsoft a true reflection of differing political philosophies? And, more importantly, will Linux win the next election?"

Even More Shocking

69% of the Republican candidates, in contrast, prefer Windows.

What's even more shocking is that the other 31% of the Republican candidates are running Ubuntu Christian Edition [blogspot.com] while it turns out in the end that the very core of their operating system is the same kernel that Ubuntu Satanic Edition [ubuntusatanic.org] runs on.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

And don't even get me started on Hillary, there's solid proof that her servers resolve to the IP address 66.66.66.66 and that good packets go in but only packets with the evil flag flipped to '1' come out.

I suppose that's politicians for you, though. 'Does not compute' with them, can't pretend we're living in a society where everyone feels equally represented without them.

Intelligent Design? Or Evolution?

Did Ubuntu Christian Edition come fully formed as a distro? Or did it evolve?

These stories of a Finnish student designing Linux must be garbage. We all know that Linux is too complex to have evolved over time to its current state. It could only have been created by an Intelligent 'designer'

Re:Intelligent Design? Or Evolution?

"You're "joke" is pretty flawed. Linux does not have the ability to replicate itself without human intervention; therefore, it does not have the ability to evolve."

Last time I checked, I didn't have the ability to replicate myself without human intervention either :-) :-)

Re:Intelligent Design? Or Evolution?

The basis of 'Intelligent Design' is that humans were essentially fully formed at their creation

No, that's not what ID says; you're thinking of young-earth creationism. ID'ers accept that evolution happened, but stipulate that certain complex structures could not have arisen through the processes of mutation and natural selection; the designer (by which, of course, they always mean God, even if they don't admit it) had to give things a little nudge in the right direction from time to time.

All creationism is bunk, but if you're going to criticize specific flavors of it, it's a good idea to know what you're criticizing; otherwise it weakens your argument and makes it easier to dismiss.

Re:Intelligent Design? Or Evolution?

Luckily, God designed me smarter than Creationists....

Re:Even More Shocking

Don't forget also: Ubuntu Satanic Edition uses the text editor of the beast, Vi Vi Vi.

Let there be Source...

... and it was good.

Re:Parent was funny, not insightful! :(

For starters, there is _NO_ ubuntu christian edition.

Actually, there is [christianubuntu.com]. It looks to basically be Ubuntu with some free Bible and other related software included. The link that the grandparent posted was a mock site.

Re:Even More Shocking

There is no "W" in the Hebrew alphabet. The 6th letter, transliterated, would be "V".

Doubt it

Lets me honest, it is VERY unlikely that these candidates even KNOW what operating system their web server is running. Furthermore, i would doubt that most of them know what an operating system, or a web server even are.

Sounds significant to me

I don't plan on doing a students t-test or anything, but these results seem pretty significant to me. You're right that the candidates probably don't know what operating system their web server is running, so instead it speaks more to the kind of people th

Re:Doubt it

Well, A more accurate survey might be how they actually stand on issues like open document, looking at open source as possible solutions instead of just buying MS products. It seems to me that more of this has happened in the last 8 years then the 8 before. But then again, a lot of strides in open source and alternative software has come around in the last 8 years so it might just be a maturity thing too.

And this still doesn't touch the individual candidates position, it could very well be some staffer telling them to vote this way or what ever. But it would still be interesting to see what these candidates would say if confronted with the question of open source verses closed and what makes the best tool for the job.

Re:Doubt it

I have to disagree. While one could assume that all of the staff members on a political campaign share the values of the candidate they are supporting, it is also very likely that there were just some nerds who needed a job. It is also quite possible that the decision was not even made in house. The choice of op-sys could have fallen into the hands of nerds who run the hosting company where the site is hosted.

Re:Perhaps your bias is showing?

The lack of a sufficient population precludes a Student test; any sample would be meaningless.

It's generational -- with the staffers.

I was surprised that Obama and Clinton had actually started putting videos on youtube [...]

I'm not. This is because 90+% of all staffers in most political campaigns are either current students or recent college graduates. When I volunteered in the 2006 election for a gubernatorial candidate that had been in office in the legislature for 20 years, we had a pretty solid YouTube presence. This is because every single staffer was internet savvy. I was the only volunteer for the campaign that didn't have a Facebook or Myspace account as far as I'm aware.

Social networking was primarily tapped by Democrats in 2004 thanks to the Dean campaign, but 2006 and on has shown that both sides are about equally savvy in this respect.

As long as politicians are mired in old thinking and do not understand current technology we will continue to have problems with the way technology is regulated and how it is being incentivised (or not).

Side note: This will ALWAYS be a problem because politicians don't really start getting into senior positions to affect things until they're in their 40's or later. Most of the cutting edge of technology is driven by people in their 20's. This generation gap does not look like it's going to change any time in the future.

Re:Doubt it

First of all, we're only at a competitive disadvantage if the politicians and lawyers leading other countries are more tech savvy than ours. I highly doubt that is the case, but please provide counterexamples if you know any.

Second, while our leaders may not be tech savvy themselves, they are intelligent enough to at least know the right people to ask for help. If you want to learn a lot about a topic, read the expert testimony at a congressional hearing about it. For example, here is the guest list for a senate hearing a few months ago on net neutrality:

• Mr. Vinton Cerf
  Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
• Mr. Walter McCormick
  President and CEO, United States Telecom Association
• Mr. Jeffrey Citron
  Chairman and CEO, Vonage
• Mr. Kyle McSlarrow
  President and CEO, National Cable & Telecommunications Association
• Mr. Earl Comstock
  President and CEO, CompTel
• Mr. Kyle Dixon
  Senior Fellow and Director of the federal Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics, The Progress & Freedom Foundation
• Mr. Lawrence Lessig
  Professor of Law, Standford Law School
• Mr. J. Gregory Sidak
  Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
• Mr. Gary Bachula
  Vice President for External Affairs, Internet2

A pretty impressive list, if you ask me. It would be pretty difficult to walk away from a meeting with that group and not have all the information you need to make a good decision on net neutrality.

If it helps you feel better, you can go on believing that politicians make decisions you disagree with out of ignorance. The truth is, the vast majority of them are highly intelligent, highly educated, and just happen to either have a different point of view than you, or hold the same opinion but allow themselves to succumb to the corrupting influence of money and power.

What About Independents, Libertarians, socialists

What do they use? We have more than two parties you know.

Re:What About Independents, Libertarians, socialis

Plan 9, Minuette, SkyOS

Interesting omission

Interesting that in the short list you provided, you omitted the party [wikipedia.org] that some people credit for causing Gore to lose the 2000 election. (I'm not making that claim, I'm just pointing out the claim.)

Re:What About Independents, Libertarians, socialis

No we don't. We have Republicans and Democrats. Anyone from any other so called "party" is really just an enemy of one of the existing parties which would make them a member of the opposing party. Where the hell have you been? If you don't hate gay marriage, then you are a godless liberal Democrat. If you support the death penalty you are christian conservative Republican. All the people who don't agree with the whole party are flip-floppers or traitors to the other party.

You're kidding, right?

Most, if not all, the candidates don't have a clue about what their website is running on, much less care about it. I really doubt that Hillary discussed Windows versus Linux versus BSD. Get real. It seems to me that most in Congress are technophobes, and have people do stuff for them.

Re:You're kidding, right?

Agreed. This tells us absolutely nothing about the candidates themselves. However, what it can tell us is what their supporters believe. And the prediction that linus will win is easy, linux is used by the most candidates. One study I'd like to see is if political affiliation correlates to a particular OS for average users.

Not the party but the supporters

Not as much the Party Ideals that choose the Operating System, But the more active supporters who choose the OS.

Democrats generally have a younger following then the republicans. More younger people know how to use Linux and know enough about it to use it properly. So Democrats will typically use Linux.

Republicans tend to have an older following and they will use what they know. If they don't know then they will use what most people seem to use. So that will be windows.

Also Open Source People tend to bereave in a more socialistic view that is more compatible with the democrats views so Linux and OSS People will be more likely to support Democrats.

Hillary Clinton is a more of a moderate candidate so bulk of the Linux supporters (who are typically more liberal) will not be as much encouraged to help her, while the general moderate population will be more willing to support her, so they will use what they know and the general population knows windows.

Re:

Give me a break, why are you reading into this so much. If you believe that garbage you need a reality check.

The campaign manager found a website project manager to construct and maintain the site. The campaign manager wanted x, y, and z to work like so

Here's one for Hillary

If Linux distro's were women... http://geeks-have-feelings-too.net/if-linux-distri butions-were-women/ [geeks-have...gs-too.net]

Given Diebold...

Given the pervalance of Diebold machines, I'd say just about anyone could win the next presidental election.

Seriously, people won't care about these crappy machines until either (1) some bat-shit-fucking insane neocon with a hard-on for starting WWIII is elected, or (2) Cowboy Neal is being sworn in.

Wait, one option already failed. Slashdotters, you know what you must do.

Re:Given Diebold...

Given the pervalance of Diebold machines, I'd say just about anyone could win the next presidental election.

That's exactly the kind of uncertainty that Diebold's backers hope to eliminate.

The candidates don't care

Does anyone actually believe the candidates care about what they're running? If you look, almost all of them are using a hosting company which, to me, indicates that they just don't care what OS they're running. Like every other client in the world, they're just worried about having a web page up and running and they don't care if it's a kitten in a box typing out the html every time a request comes in. They just care if it works. While interesting, I can't for the life of me understand why people would think it's a political issue what OS their sites are running on.

Good to know

But it's the last thing I care about in this election. With the Iraqi war, the illusion of "terrorism", Big Government Republicans(let's get rid of state rights AND build new, extraneous federal agencies like TSA and DOHS). I could care less if they thought apple iie was the newest type of computer on the market and urging everyone to upgrade to that that is fine. OSS needs to win on a technically better standpoint not a political motivation. It also needs to win because of an Open Government standpoint too, not just because it is OSS.

Re:

What the OP means is that it's not as big a deal as people are making it out to be. The whole "car accidents kill more people" argument and such.

Re:Good to know

Terrorism is real. It is being perpetrated by the leaders of most first world countries to scare the population into reducing freedoms and minimizing privacy rights at an alarming rate.

Oh, you meant the people who hate us and want to blow us up? Well, in the grand scheme of things (AIDS, cancer, automobile accidents, floods, tornadoes) I suppose there may be a small percentage of deaths attributed to such actions, and they also serve to scare portions of the population.

Yeah, there is terrorism out there, but mostly it's a smokescreen for larger, more expensive governmental oversight of the people who are unlikely to ever kill large numbers of people with the intent to scare a community or a nation.

Re:

The idea that terrorism is a day-to-day threat to the average American is an illusion.

BTW, the holocaust beats terrorism by a few orders of magnitude.

Re:Good to know

No, just the current concept of people attacking for the sake of frightening us is an illusion. There's reasons they came after us, but what is presented to the American people is an illusion. Ron Paul(a great Republican) said it best:

"If we think we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free, they come and attack us because we're over there."

9/11 wasn't ideological. It was an attack plain and simple. They don't have troops, they can't win a war, they can't get us out, these are the things that are their only recourse. We call it terrorism because "No one would want to attack us for the things we do" even though we've been meddling with their governments and lifestyles for over 50 years.

Giant douche runs Linux, Turd sandwich Windows.

Used rubber runs BSD.

Vote Giant douche.

There really is a strong correlation!

Even the more moderate Republican candidates such as Ron Paul and Rudy Guliani are running Linux whereas most of the true right wingers are running windows and most of the true left wingers are running linux or BSD.

Perhaps this can be construed as a statement of American corporatism seeing as the fundamentals of a Republican viewpoint involve making sure there are plenty of jobs by making sure the corporations do well. This would mean that "buying American" is the way to go. The Democratic viewpoint however, encourages the little man to do well so saving money and being a savvy consumer on an individual level are preferred along with "giving the little guy a chance" so various flavors of linux and BSD come into play there.

Definitely an interesting find!

No and No

Is this preference for OSS or Microsoft a true reflection of differing political philosophies? And, more importantly, will Linux win the next election?

No and No.

If you honestly believe that a candidate's webserver reflects their political leanings, you're sadly delusional.

If you're planning your vote based on the candidates choice of webserver OS, then you're really missing the bigger issues.

There is not a single thing done on any of the candidate sites that are platform specific. And I doubt any of them developed their sites "in-house" (within the campaign staff). I would bet that every single one of them found a developer and/or hosting company to design and build their site. And they probably went with whatever that developer/hosting provider recommended for a hosting plan.

While looking at the differences makes for an interesting exercise in alleviating boredom, it says nothing about the overall race or candidate's positions and abilities.

And I say this as a web developer who works on both Windows and *NIX servers and usually recommends Apache on Linux or FreeBSD.

Re:

I would bet that every single one of them found a developer and/or hosting company to design and build their site. And they probably went with whatever that developer/hosting provider recommended for a hosting plan

Okay, so you're saying it is an amazing co

Re:

I'm not so sure that it doesn't have an implication of their political leanings. While I don't think that any of the canidates are closely enough involved to even know what is running their web server, it had to be decided by someone. It gives a lot more

Re:No and No

If you honestly believe that a candidate's webserver reflects their political leanings, you're sadly delusional.

Sadly delusional? Sadly??? Dude, I like my delusions, which is why they're still around.

/me goes to look for grandeur...

Soko

Who gives a crap? Just vote for the right person!

I really don't give a damn what servers are driving their websites. I give a damn about what their policies would be, and what hopes, ideals and dreams they intend to realise.

As a non-American, I don't get to vote for one of these people next year (heck, for that matter, neither do disenfranchised Americans) but that doesn't mean that this election doesn't effect me. In many ways (the "War on Terror", climate change, etc), those of us outside the US are just as effected by White House policy as Americans themselves.

So, I implore those of you that can vote to a) do so; b) encourage everybody you know to do so; and c) vote for the candidate that will do the most to repair the damage done in the last six years by the current incumbent.

Please, the last anybody needs is another head-in-the-sand US administration. We're not exactly at the last chance saloon just yet but four more years of politics ad absurdum isn't going to help make things better.

Re:Who gives a crap? Just vote for the right perso

Don't tell me about the importance of elections; we've seen the results of uninformed and apathetic voters over the last 6 years. Even some of the most die-hard dittoheads are abandoning ship (you'll hear a lot more people calling themselves "Libertarian" rather than "Conservative" nowadays). But, you're telling me that you don't find it interesting that there's such a disparity in Linux preference and that it doesn't belong on Slashdot?

Ron Paul & Linux

If Ron Paul wins, then Linux will too.

telnet www.ronpaul2008.com 80
Trying 74.205.85.10...
Connected to www.ronpaul2008.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:17:44 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Connection closed by foreign host.

Re:Ron Paul & Linux

If Ron Paul wins I won't have to buy gas anymore because I'll simply catch a ride with a flying pig to work.

Seriously, Ron Paul is the right version of Kucinich. He stands about the same chance of winning the Republican nomination as Hillary does of winning a beauty pageant.

Re:

and John Kerry ($750m), Herb Kohl($243m), Jay Rockefeller($200m), Jane Harman($172m), Dianne Feinstein($42m), Edward Kennedy($19m), Jeff Bingaman, Tom Harkin, Mark Dayton, Jon Corzine. Most years the few top richest democrats in congress dwarf the holdings

it's the Duopoly

True, that. (Thanks for the figures. I didn't have them handy.) We don't have a Democratic and a Republican party, we have a single Politician Party. One monster, two heads, that call each other names in order to distract us.

Re:Why?

Republicans are rich and Democrats are not (except Hilliary)

Except Obama... and Edwards... and Gore... ...

Re:

Wasn't McCain the guy who used the templates and didn't give the credit were it said you needed to do on Myspace and even had the gull to pull the pictures from the template makers website which let him replace it with a joke image?

It probably was the 12 y

Re:It *does* reflect thinking of the candidates

This is also mirrored in funding. Dems (especially this cycle) will tend to get lots of smaller donations, while Republicans will get larger and fewer donations. Check the news stories.

You should check the news stories, because you've got the donation patterns backwards. The GOP gets smaller, but more, donations, and the Democrats get larger and fewer donations from Hollywood and George Soros types.

Re:It *does* reflect thinking of the candidates

Dude, (or dudette), read this and weep:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/donordems.asp?cy cle=2008 [opensecrets.org]

For the under $200 donations, here's the breakdown:
Dems: 34,705
Reps: 27,710

From the graphs it looks like some other candidates get a larger portion of http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/geog.asp?id=N000 00286&cycle=2008

So please, don't trot out the usual suspects (Hollywood and George Soros) before doing some research.

Re:It *does* reflect thinking of the candidates

Link to article discussing the "soft-money" donations, and how the GOP is wiping the floor with the Dems. [findarticles.com]

Your OpenSecrets link is misleading and inaccurate, because politicians are not required to report the number of sub $200 donations. When you look at the $5 and $10 donations, etc, and do the math correctly, the GOP comes out way ahead of the Democrats right now.

Campaign Finance Reform helped the GOP, too. [newsmax.com] From that article: The Supreme Court's ruling on campaign finance gives the Republicans, who raise far more in small donations, a big advantage in next year's elections for the White House and Congress.