The Debt Keeps Rising

… while the Republicans keep using non-free software.

Anybody examine the difference between http://republican.senate.gov/ and http://democrats.senate.gov/ lately?

Hint, one of them is complaining about the debt, while the other one is using the free and open-source software package, WordPress, to create their website.

Guess which is which. No points if it takes more than one guess.

The Republican website seems to be running on ColdFusion, a software package that kinda went out of style in 2002-2003, but for which Adobe nevertheless keeps releasing version after version, hoping somebody will notice. Well, at least now I know they have one client, I suppose.

On the other hand, the Democrats site is clearly running on WordPress 3.1.3 (not the latest version, but they’re only half a day behind, and probably not even that by tomorrow), which is a free software package that runs roughly 14.3% of the sites on the internet, including all the major websites that the people who read my blogs read every single day.

Hmm… I wonder who’s more in tune with the times.

Disclaimer: I work on WordPress, but would be heavily biased against the Republican party regardless of who my employer was. #justsaying

6 thoughts on “The Debt Keeps Rising”

  1. THANK YOU for this writeup. Perfect side by side comparison.

    WordPress could save government millions of dollars, especially at the local level where communities might not have the resources to operate a more elaborate CMS. And with the single largest community of users of any open source CMS, WordPress seems like a really safe bet for agencies concerned about finding someone to develop, extend & maintain their sites. Chances are there’s a WordPresser right there in their own community. No need to hire a designer shop from SF / NY / DC although there are plenty of those if that’s your thing.

    Again, fantastic. Keep ’em coming Otto!

  2. Hey Otto I just happened on your post and thought to leave a comment. As a republican I totally agree with you that government should be doing whatever free things they can use to keep costs low. You should know that there are tons of political pages both R and D that use WordPress for this very reason. I too, don’t understand why they aren’t using WordPress in the first place.

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