
The White House just open sourced their first Github repo - maxogden
https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition
======
ef4
> "President Obama is committed to creating the most open and participatory
> government in our nation’s history"

I'll believe that when his administration stops being one of the most
secretive and most aggressive prosecutors of whistleblowers in recent history.

Sources:

[http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/obamas_unprecedented_war_on_...](http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/obamas_unprecedented_war_on_whistleblowers/)
[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-
whistlebl...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-
whistleblowers-stuxnet-leaks-drones)
[http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/expert_con...](http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/expert_consensus_obama_aping_bush_on_state_secrets.php/)
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/us/politics/new-rules-
to-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/us/politics/new-rules-to-curb-
leaks-and-catch-leakers.html?_r=1)
[http://www.salon.com/2012/03/30/the_most_transparent_adminis...](http://www.salon.com/2012/03/30/the_most_transparent_administration_ever%E2%84%A2/)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/us/government-
documents-i...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/us/government-documents-in-
plain-sight-but-still-classified.html)

~~~
stblack
I reckon this was simply a first-pass readme -- hands-up, who likes writing
those?

I submitted a pull request that tones down the hyperbole somewhat:
<https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/pull/5>

I sense it's essential for them to keep the project focused on the software.
Partly what makes this interesting is managing the partisan nature of
discourse. That's a unique non-functional requirement here.

It's a good test for Github as a collaboration platform.

~~~
slurgfest
If it is possible to manage the partisan nature of discourse, it is also
possible to exacerbate it and to frame it in a desired way. Since this project
has no special protection and seems to be uniformly hated by citizens, we can
expect it to be abolished in the next Presidency and possibly replaced with
something more blatantly partisan.

------
daenz
And, in the spirit of the project, they'll reject all pull requests with a
patronizing response about the way things are.[1][2]

1\. [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-and-
regul...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-and-regulate-
marijuana-manner-similar-alcohol/y8l45gb1)

2\. [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/abolish-tsa-and-
us...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/abolish-tsa-and-use-its-
monstrous-budget-fund-more-sophisticated-less-intrusive-counter-
terrorism/c7L94bFB?utm_source=wethepeople&utm_medium=response&utm_campaign=tsa)

~~~
fruchtose
Not to worry, someone has created an issue for this bug:
<https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/issues/2>

~~~
purephase
That's just stupid. As if the developers involved, who are likely proud of
their work and the go-ahead to release it to the community, have anything to
do with the petition outcomes.

People need to think things through sometimes.

~~~
daenz
It raises awareness of the issue. Why should any self-respecting developer
want to contribute to a code base that does nothing but facilitate the
government ignoring peoples' grievances, while at the same time making them
feel like they are participating?

~~~
ceejayoz
> It raises awareness of the issue.

OK, I'll bite. Who is now aware of the issue who wasn't previously?

~~~
purephase
You're right. It does nothing except belittle the efforts of the developers.
They're trying to make their work more open which should be applauded. Just
because the entire administration does not adhere to their stated philosophy,
doesn't mean that we (the developer community) should be jumping on those who
are at least making an attempt.

The majority of HN readers and GH users would immediately close issues / pull
requests like this and be bitter about it. I don't understand why there is a
double standard being applied here.

~~~
jMerliN
But shouldn't they? They are accessories. They are developing something that
has no purpose other than to mislead people. They're writing political
malware, if you will. They should be belittled, as it's completely unethical
to participate in such a farce.

We should also note that making this software open (which is actually pretty
badly designed, actually looking at it) is a similar farce. The objective they
claim, for doing so, is somehow related to an open government. That's like
claiming open-sourcing the software you use to send electronic messages back
and forth is making your actual communications with said software "open."
Nonsense.

------
izakage
I am curious about GPL compatibility in this situation. According to [1],
software developed by US federal government cannot be licensed under the GPL
since it is automatically in the public domain. However, the github repo
readme makes the following claim:

"The project utilizes code licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public
License and therefore is licensed under GPL v2 or later."

While I applaud this effort and wish to see more like it in the future, is
there a possible issue with licensing here?

[1] [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-
licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#GP...](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-
licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#GPLUSGov)

~~~
SoftwareMaven
This was exactly my question. How can they put limitations on public domain
code?

~~~
dllthomas
They can't, but only part of the code is public domain. If you want to use the
whole pile of it, you do so under the GPL - if you pick out the changes made
by the govt, then you can apply those elsewhere.

~~~
mmahemoff
So effectively GPL imposes a dual (or multiple) license on the non-GPL part.

~~~
dllthomas
Insofar as the non-GPL part is specific to the GPL code, yes. If you
reimplement the GPL code under a different license, you could reuse the public
domain bits. I expect in most cases, it wouldn't be terribly worthwhile.

------
snowwrestler
Just want to point out that this is not the first code contributed to open
source from the WhiteHouse.gov project. Several of the Drupal modules
developed for the site were made available to the community on Drupal.org not
long after the new site launched. Some examples (may not be all of them):

<http://drupal.org/project/govdelivery> <http://drupal.org/project/akamai>
<http://drupal.org/project/context_http_headers>
<http://drupal.org/project/node_embed>

Actually it strikes me as a little strange that this code is on Github since
Drupal.org has an entire section devoted to Drupal "distributions", which is
what this appears to be. I mean, is the White House tech office moving to a
full open source development model? Are they planning to appoint volunteer
maintainers and accept pull requests? I sort of doubt it.

~~~
mikey_p
And specifically it includes a drupal-org.make file which is a manifest for
the Drupal.org packaging system which bundles up this profile, all of it's
dependencies, and Drupal core into a single download. Perhaps they are
planning to put it there, or just decided to mirror it on Github for now.

Also FWIW, the petition namespace on d.o is already occupied, perhaps that is
blocking the release on d.o?

~~~
sprice
A drupal-org.make file, like any .make file that the Drupal tool Drush uses,
is independent of the Drupal.org packaging system.

There's a lot of pressure from within the Drupal community to host all Drupal
contrib modules, themes, and distributions on drupal.org but I don't see
anything wrong with a distribution being hosted on GitHub. It certainly brings
more visibility to the project from developers outside of the "Drupal Island".

~~~
snowwrestler
It does, which might have been part of the reason they did it this way. Github
is increasingly "the place to be" for open source projects, so the White House
probably wants to get involved there too. (I don't mean this cynically BTW--I
believe they honestly are trying to move the government more toward open
source.)

And a lot of Drupal developers do use Github for their own work. On the other
hand when they go to check out distribution options for a new project, I bet
they start on Drupal.org. It's just so convenient, and like you say, there's a
strong norm within the community to put everything there. Even the few
"commercial" distributions can be found there. I assume this work will show up
there at some point as well.

------
sneak
Who cares? This is boring code. Save all the "it portends an open government!"
handwaving for once the Obama admin does something _actually_ meaningful (in a
positive way - starting a new war doesn't count).

Seriously. Much ado about a Drupal module that is used for people to petition
the government to be patronized and ignored.

~~~
waterside81
That's a pretty cynical way of viewing things. Take a look at the big picture:
the highest office in the land (world?) is doing what we here on HN do: push
public code, accept feedback, leverage open source etc. It's a fantastic start
towards a new paradigm of open source code in public places. This should be
celebrated; a new generation of people are running things now. It can only get
better.

~~~
sneak
Thank you for doing exactly what I suggested that you not.

------
dkhenry
It would be really cool if they let the devs use their public names and GitHub
accounts to commit. As of right now it is WH-NewMedia, and there is no
history. Makes me think this is a marketing excersize rather then a new leaf
in federal software development.

~~~
zacharycohn
I doubt it's a marketing exercise. There are people who really are trying to
change things from inside. It takes time, and it takes a lot of small steps.
Why don't you contact them and encourage them to use individual public names?

~~~
nhebb
I would believe that more if there were a single White House petition that
resulted in action. Even their SOPA petition response was pretty murky.

~~~
nowarninglabel
What does whether or not a petition is responded to have to do with open-
sourcing code in a White House repo? Your complaint is like if Mac open
sourced a component of OS X and you went on a rant about them not moving work
out of abusive factories in China due to a petition.

~~~
kennywinker
True, but it's hard to disentangle the product from the thing that produced
it. If Apple open sourced a product, I would fully expect to see criticism of
their policies (probably around openness and and transparency, rather than
labour) in any collective reaction.

------
intoit
Moving from MongoDB to MySQL. I never understood why people felt they need
MongoDB/NoSQL for their projects. Does anyone have an example where it was
_really_ necessary/advantageous?

~~~
dkhenry
According to the README they say preformance improvements with Mongo. The
downside was having to port all the new features over to it.

Personally I have used it to speed up development. It allows very fast
iterations early on and integrates much more nicely with most languages then a
SQL based solution. Also its a lot faster the MySQL.

~~~
jmikola
10gen sponsors development of a Drupal module, EntityFieldQuery[1], which aims
to improve support for non-SQL databases. Although I'm unfamiliar with Drupal
project layouts, I didn't find a reference to the module in the GitHub
project, so I don't believe they were using it. That said, there are still
challenges to making MongoDB play nicely with Drupal 7, but 10gen is aiming
for better integration in version 8 (through the same sponsorship).

1\. <http://drupal.org/project/efq_views>

------
arctangent
Here in the UK, the Government Digital Service [1] are doing much the same
thing. They're building a single site for all government services and
publishing all their code on GitHub.

[1] <http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/>

------
throwaway54-762
I've never seen the name "Obama" and "licensed under GPL v2 or later" in the
same document before -- cool.

------
jgoney
I'm a little disappointed; I wouldn't have thought this community to be so
cynical and partisan. Can't we all just get along?

------
klearvue
While this is the first with respect to releasing on Github, in April 2010
White House also released 2 open source Drupal modules (for Akamai integration
and another one).

------
ejesse
Now if we could just get THOMAS into Github so we can upgrade that beast...

~~~
kanzure
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THOMAS>

So who developed THOMAS?

~~~
sp332
Hey I know this is late but I just got an email back from "O'Keeffe, Hope
loke@loc.gov" that just says it's based on a commercial system that is "out of
support" and not available.

------
kennywinker
Finally I can sass the whitehouse using github issues!

<https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/issues/2>

~~~
rauljara
Let's say you were a web developer hired to design some part of Apple's
website, and by some miracle Apple let you open source your code. You, as a
web developer, have no special way to contact or pass information on to Tim
Cook, or any other top Apple executive. Would you appreciate sassy comments
about Foxconn in your repository's pull requests?

~~~
kennywinker
Well, being that I would probably agree wholeheartedly with the sassy comment,
I wouldn't mind someone using the release as a platform for their political
expression. But that's me.

In this case the POINT of the software was supposed to be political
expression, so it doesn't seem _that_ out of place to me.

------
ceol
Ignoring all the snarky comments about how the current administration has
ignored every online petition so far, this is really cool. Everyone now has a
chance to have their name attached to an official government project!

------
ericdykstra
Great! Now if we can just get some transparency into issues that matter.

------
rparet
Interesting case giving up MongoDB because of the complexity of adapting
another application to use it. I wonder if this is a good use case for
something like <http://www.nuodb.com/>

------
robgolding
Check out the first commit to this project:
[https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/commit/fcb103e966f777...](https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/commit/fcb103e966f777c73d82e99fb4592df386d7aaef)

------
kyebosh
Certainly an interesting microcosm of a type of democracy... I wonder how
feasible this kind of model would be for actual policy making.

~~~
csense
The more influential the channel gets, the harder people will try to game the
system to push their own agenda. I.e. fake or hacked registrations, buying
signatures, or trying to promote comments favorable to your point of view
while burying opposing ones.

Right now the influence of this app is zero, so we don't have these problems.
It's just a marketing dog-and-pony show where they can say "Look we're
actually responding to people's questions" but the answers are extremely vague
nothings and you have no idea if the President / Cabinet / anyone with real
authority even _reads_ the petitions that have 6- or 7-digit signature counts,
let alone acting on them.

~~~
slurgfest
Oh I don't know, it isn't much different from a system which analyzes emails
to see what motivated constituents with email are saying - it's just public. I
think it's an interesting experiment and a starting point. I don't think it is
ever wrong in a democracy to give people a way of publicizing a message or to
give elected officials visibility into relevant things people are saying
publicly.

I don't know where the high expectations came from. But I might speculate that
many people are starting from dislike of the President's policies and then
from there tarring the website, rather than actually responding directly to
the idea of the website.

------
kellysutton
Suddenly, I became interested in politics again.

~~~
foenix
Government ≠ Politics

~~~
iamdave
Huh?

------
stephenhandley
$markup .= 'You've got my vote, Little Face Mitt.';

------
thinkingisfun
Here's the quote I was looking for.

 _"A totalitarian state simply enunciates official doctrine -- clearly,
explicitly. Internally, one can think what one likes, but one can only express
opposition at one's peril. In a democratic system of propaganda no one is
punished (in theory) for objecting to official dogma. In fact, dissidence is
encouraged. What this system attempts to do is to fix the limits of possible
thought: supporters of official doctrine at one end, and the critics --
vigorous, courageous, and much admired for their independence of judgment --
at the other. The hawks and the doves. But we discover that all share certain
tacit assumptions, and that it is these assumptions that are really crucial.
No doubt a propaganda system is more effective when its doctrines are
insinuated rather than asserted, when it sets the bounds for possible thought
rather than simply imposing a clear and easily identifiable doctrine that one
must parrot -- or suffer the consequences. The more vigorous the debate, the
more effectively the basic doctrines of the propaganda system, tacitly assumed
on all sides, are instilled. Hence the elaborate pretense that the press is a
critical dissenting force -- maybe even too critical for the health of
democracy -- when in fact it is almost entirely subservient to the basic
principles of the ideological system: in this case, the principle of the right
of intervention, the unique right of the United States to serve as global
judge and executioner. It is quite a marvelous system of indoctrination."_

\-- Noam Chomsky, "Language and Responsibility" (1977)

But of course, that was then, today it's totally different, right? Right.

------
justinph
Neat. Too bad it's drupal, rendering it totally useless to people with actual
taste or skill.

~~~
klearvue
Do you not find it ironic that people with those qualities would not leave
such an ignorant comment in the first place?

~~~
justinph
Usually I do, but I make an exception for Drupal. I've got the battle scars to
prove it.

