The office of the president of the United States has made available as open source software its 'We the People' petitions application. The software is built on the Drupal content management system. The code is available on the Github software repository since this Thursday.
Releasing the source code for this application is meant to empower other governments and organizations to use this platform to engage their own citizens and constituencies. In addition, public review and contribution to the application’s code base will help strengthen and improve the platform, the White House explains in the Readme file included in the software, and published on the project's site on Github.
"President Obama is committed to creating the most open and participatory government in our nation’s history, and this petitioning platform is a key part of that initiative. In September, 2011, the White House launched We the People, a powerful and simple way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of issues. If a petition gathers a minimum number of signatures in a defined amount of time, policy officials review it and publish an official response."
"Among our commitments, we're launching a new online tool -- called "We the People" -- to allow Americans to directly petition the White House, and we'll share that technology so any government in the world can enable its citizens to do the same."
The White House also states the project is not subject to domestic copyright protection, and that it is licensed under the GPLv2 or later.
More information:
We The People petitions application on Github
LWN news item