Thread

White House shifts to Open Source because it is more secured than none-open CMS.. Interesting..

That the White House would dump ExpressionEngine for Drupal, and cite security as the reason for having done so despite the vast difference in the two systems’ security records, is not surprising. The Obama Administration, you see, is incompetent amateur hour all the way. I look forward to the inevitable haxx0r attack.

That the White House would dump ExpressionEngine for Drupal

Whitehouse.gov never ran on EE, I believe it was an ASP site when it first launched.

That the White House would dump ExpressionEngine for Drupal

Whitehouse.gov never ran on EE, I believe it was an ASP site when it first launched.

Correct it was http://www.change.gov that ran on ExpressionEngine for a while wasn’t it?

Yep, and it still does (if you click through at the bottom).

As I recall, they have other active sites running on Drupal, so the decision made sense from a management standpoint.

Drupal = job security 😉 rough time call for it.

Yet the system — known as Drupal — alone won’t make it more secure on its own, cautioned Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Sign up for Drupal lists…you will see 3-4 emails a month about found security issues.
Who would not want to be the one to report yet another security issue…drupal community would love your ‘contribution’. No thank you; I like seeing CP load up in EE rather than message of the day “you been hacked by…”

Drupal = job security rough time call for it.

I was thinking the same thing. I’ve evaluated Drupal and found it significantly harder to use than ExpressionEngine. That means a bigger professional-services budget for the “free” software than for the wildly expensive commercial package. ($249? Insane! The Spendulus would only cover 3.1 billion commercial licenses of ExpressionEngine.)

This is also why Microsoft Exchange keeps getting specced for corporate mailservers. Gotta have a guy babysit the thing full-time.

Obviously I would have liked to see EE get that kind of exposure, but Drupal is probably not a bad choice. Yes, it’s a little more complicated, but for a project of that size it really matters not. And since security has been mentioned: they can certainly afford 24/7 monitoring, so that’s not much of an issue, either.

Decisions like this often have more to do with whatever the preferred software is of the firm / group that got the job than the specific merits of one application vs. another.  I’m sure they’ll do a good job with Drupal, and it’s good to see them getting off of Windows servers.

Decisions like this often have more to do with whatever the preferred software is of the firm / group that got the job than the specific merits of one application vs. another.

Yep, that’s solidly an issue of ‘go with what you know’ and not a big plug for Drupal or a put down of EE. The security records of the two speak independently and forcefully.

I’ve had a few clients request that I use Drupal on a build, but I choose to ‘go with what I know’ and trust. It’s not that Drupal is horrible. It’s not. It’s very capable. Dependability, security, and support are items high on my needs list (and, high on the client’s list), and Drupal doesn’t match EE.

We now have a technology platform to get more and more voices on the site

...sounds like him and Bill Gates go to same coffee shop.
I wonder where Macon Phillips is going to be when the slash page of the site has an animated gif of a 3rd world country’s flag :lol:

Decisions like this often have more to do with whatever the preferred software is

Yes but there are many times features make the difference - usually to EEs advantage in my case - but I can see where Drupal might be a better choice in this case as you’d probably need a more robust member/permissions system - individuals belonging to multiple groups. The site is probably more like an intranet behind the scenes.

Off Topic…But just couldn’t help it…

The Obama Administration, you see, is incompetent amateur hour all the way

Heeee, heeee, heee - Not biased in any way are you Brandon. You sound like a leftover Palin groupie 😊

Edit-Add; Being an independent, I make fun of die hards on both sides.

I would be extremely surprised if the White House CMS is an unmodified version of Drupal. It would make sense that much of the codebase would be altered for security, and as long as you’re going to do that, why not start with an open source product? As much as I love EE, I like the fact that the administration chose an open source solution, especially as they are promoting the aspects of transparent and accessible government.

Plus, as PXLated mentioned, Drupal has features that aren’t available in EE, and more and more of EE’s functionality is being made available through third-party plugins and extensions, which quickly negate the benefit of a commercial, everything-from-one-provider solution. Running Drupal also makes possible to extend the functionality of the site beyond what an EE license would provide.

...and I hope they enjoyed checking their email today. There is about 3-4 days a month like these. Their mailing list is the most active module. 😊