Period Three Blog » Fascinating? Really?

Jul062007

Fascinating? Really?

Posted by Jay in Uncategorized

I’m struggling to find the point of this article by Douglas Karr, titled Is the next President of the United States running Linux?

According to Netcraft, Ron Paul’s site was previously run on Microsoft IIS but as of June 5th it’s now on Apache!

That’s worthy of an exclamation point? That’s like saying Ross Perot used to drive a Ford, but now he drives a Chevrolet! His results show that the majority of Republican candidates have websites hosted on Windows servers, while a majority of Democrats run something other than Windows (Linux or FreeBSD). He sums it up by saying it’s ‘fascinating’. Please, Douglas, tell us why it’s fascinating.

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Posted at 8:27 am on 07/06/07

Douglas Karr

Hi Jay,

I’m inherently a critic of politics and believe that both lobbying and money have a huge impact on our politicians’ decisions. While it is doubtful that each politician decided what server they are going to run their site, the findings were, indeed, fascinating. Here’s why:

I’m no statistician, but the numbers clearly provide a correlation between Democrat and Open Source as well as Republican and Microsoft. It may speak more to the kind of people that each party attracts than the candidate in question, but I believe there is still a story here.

There’s a huge difference in Open Source or Microsoft. The business behind each and how it drives our software industry is very unique from one another. Open source (Linux) is also under attack from Microsoft with a huge volume of patent lawsuits pending. It seems to me that politicians would be cautious in their embrace of Linux or Microsoft.

Your comparison of a Perot in a Chevy or Ford is flawed since the two companies are both huge and similar in fashion. However, if you said that Democrats drive Hybrids and Republicans drive Cadillacs, that would be fascinating as well.

You need not take my word for it. That post has garnered a huge volume of attention - from the home page of Slashdot, to Reddit, to StumbleUpon to Digg. You may not find it fascinating - but other folks are. Perhaps for the same reasons I stated.

Cheers! And no hard feelings - I respect your opinion on this!
Doug
Posted at 12:07 pm on 07/06/07

Gene

I’m not sure your argument really holds true though, you have to first assume that the candidates themselves have some personal interest in the millions of details in their campaign to even care about what platform their website is running on. 9/10 times these guys [their campaign staff to be exact] will be choosing from a number of web design and development sources and go with the lowest bidder or one that their buddy tells them to go with. I would think platform is the last thing they would think about. Not to mention the impact on their platforms choice has on their personal brand.
Posted at 12:11 pm on 07/06/07

Jay

I think there’s a story there, too. But I didn’t really see any conclusions necessarily drawn. Not that my post is any more substantive… So Ron Paul switched to Apache, what does that mean? Maybe he just got a new web designer? Maybe hosting is generally cheaper on Linux/Apache than Windows and we all know that Ron Paul pretty much has no money. I think the correlation you see doesn’t necessarily imply meaning without much context.
Posted at 1:14 pm on 07/06/07

Douglas Karr

@Gene: You may be correct. I’m not going to state irrevocably that there is a 100% assurance. I just believe there is a story there. Thanks!

@Jay: I agree with you… Ron Paul switching was simply the trigger that lead me to do the analysis across all candidates. I should have been clear on the ‘fascinating’ part - the results of the overall analysis were fascinating… not Ron Paul’s switch to Linux.
Posted at 2:54 pm on 07/09/07

Gene

Trust me, I would really like to see that there is truly an evil/microsoft/republican vs. good/linux/democrat affiliation.

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Fascinating? Really?

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