Dries Buytaert

Yesterday, the White House announced a plan to deepen its commitment to open source. Under this plan, new, custom-developed government software must be made available for use across other federal agencies, and a portion of all projects must be made open source and shared with the public. This plan will make it much easier to share best practices, collaborate, and save money across different government departments.

However, there are still some questions to address. In good open source style, the White House is inviting developers to comment on this policy. As the Drupal community we should take advantage and comment on GitHub within the 30-day feedback window.

The White House has a long open source history with Drupal. In October 2009, WhiteHouse.gov relaunched on Drupal and shortly thereafter started to actively contribute back to Drupal — both were a first in the history of the White House. White House's contributions to Drupal include the "We the People" petitions platform, which was adopted by other governments and organizations around the world.

This week's policy is big news because it will push open source deeper into the roots of the U.S. government, requiring more government agencies to become active open source contributors. We'll be able to solve problems faster and, together, build better software for citizens across the U.S.

I'm excited to see how this plays out in the coming months!