Is the next President of the United States running Linux?

Earlier today I read a post about Ron Paul’s website. Interestingly, his site is less of a typical candidate site and more of a mashup of other sources of information about him. What a fantastic idea and it shows additional transparency. That got me even more curious, what was the site developed on?

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

So that got me wondering… what are the other candidates’ sites running? Does this provide some insight into their overall candidacy?

Site Operating System and Server by Candidate

Joe Biden (Democrat) – Linux, Zope by Interlix
Hillary Clinton (Democrat) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Paul Holcomb
Christopher Dodd (Democrat) – FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
John Edwards (Democrat) – Linux, Apache by Plus Three
Mike Gravel (Democrat) – Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
Dennis Kucinich (Democrat) – Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
Barack Obama (Democrat) – FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
Bill Richardson (Democrat) – Linux, Zope by Interlix
Wesley Clark (Democrat) – Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
Al Gore (Democrat) – Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Sam Brownback (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by RackForce Hosting, Inc.
Jim Gilmore (Republican) – Linux, Apache by 1&1 Internet, Inc.
Rudy Giuliani (Republican) – Linux, Apache by RackSpace
Mike Huckabee (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
Duncun Hunter (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
John McCain (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
Ron Paul (Republican) – Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Mitt Romney (Republican) – Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Tom Tancredo (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Interland
Fred Thompson (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
Tommy Thompson (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Time Warner Telecom, Inc.
Chuck Hagel (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
Newt Gingrich (Republican) – Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation

Here’s the overall breakdown, pretty interesting results:

All Candidates
Democrats
Republicans

It’s fascinating to me that the Dems are predominantly Open Source… except for Hillary Clinton and the Republicans are predominantly Microsoft with the exception of Ron Paul, Jim Gilmore, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

I predict Linux will win the election.

About Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in inbound marketing leveraging social media, blogging, search engine optimization, pay per click and public relations. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies.

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http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

You can Digg this post here.
http://ckurl.com/default.aspx ck

I predict you’re wrong. I see one of three people winning, Clinton, Fred Thompson, or Gingrich. The Obama stuff just can’t stand in the backwoods of many states, ‘ole JR isn’t going to vote for him.

So that leaves the three I listed, all Windows folks. What I find funny is that the two Republican guys I listed haven’t even declared yet.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

I hope you’re wrong on 2 of those 4 predictions, ck. I don’t want to tell you which 2, though! I like being independent and complaining about all of them equally.

http://aberrantabsurdity.com Adam Teece

I hope they come up with a simple chart detailing all of the candidates and what their stances on each of the major issues are. It is a bit of a pain going through to each website and reading everything. I like a few of the candidates, but each one has a stance on one or two of the issues that I really don’t like.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Adam,

I’m not sure it would ever be the goal of any political candidate to make it easier to find their stance.

Doug

http://aberrantabsurdity.com Adam Teece

I know the candidates would never do it, but it might make a useful Wikipedia page.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Adam,

That’s a fantastic idea. I can’t imagine all the attention a page like that would get. Wikivote!

I noticed the Wikipedia pages for the Candidates right now are changing non-stop. There is a collective article on the 2008 elections there, too. There are links to each of their Wikipedia pages as well as their official campaign sites.

Doug

JoshJ

http://www.ontheissues.org has a voting history and policy stance of every candidate in the running for the 2008 election, as well as every Senator and Representative.
CJ

There’s also this site to see whom you most closely align with: http://www.selectsmart.com/president/2008.html

http://www.netmonkey.net/ Matt B.

Very interesting. I wonder how much attention their campaigns paid to the actual platform on which their site operates.

It would be very interesting to see if candidates have received political donations from companies such as Microsoft, Red Hat, etc.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

I wonder the same thing, Matt. Especially since many of the candidates switched platforms – I’m curious what the driver was to make the switch.

http://www.nathandrach.info Natron

Yet another reason to vote Democrat!
http://www.jackbook.com/ Jack Book

wow.. digged!
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http://www.planetmy.com Planet Malaysia

The candidate don’t care what is Windows, Linux or FreeBSD
http://patf.net/blogs/ pfarrell

Given McCain’s support for Steve Ballmer it’s not much of a shock he’s running Windows.

Also, if you’re going to include Al Gore and Fred Thompson, then how can you forget Al Sharpton – Windows 2000, NeoSpire Inc

Perhaps he should upgrade
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Kahlil

Forget the democrats! Greens want open-source voting software!
http://sghazi.blogspot.com Shahryar Ghazi

interesting observation… thanks for sharing this with us
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http://www.colinbaker.org Colin Baker

23 is a tiny, meaningless sample size, and it’s silly to draw any conclusions from this. Now if you include, say, all of the US Senators and Congressmen, that could be interesting.
Kyle

In the last election the owner of XMission (a local isp) ran for senate. He’s been a long time supporter of Linux. We have a hotly contested mayoral election in Salt Lake City this year. He asked each candidate to answer a survey that he then posted on his blog. One of the questions pointed out that each candidate had endorsed buying local. He then asked where their website was hosted. It was interesting to read some of the candidates trying to dodge the question. Soon they’ll hopefully come to realize that these things can really matter.
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Daniel

Hillary is not MS-only, http://connect.hillaryclinton.com/ runs on Java.
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Lol

ROFL, the most stupid comparison ever! Very funny, keep going!:) At least I hope it was a joke ….
Phillistine

Dude,

What are you trying to do ?

I hope you realize you have symbolically painted a target on yourself by doing this.

I found the article rather amusing and actually interesting since you have put an entirely new twist to the election debate.

As mentioned by the previous poster, I hope it was more done in jest ….

http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/ Mike Schinkel

Quick! Get this man a sense of humor!

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Seriously! I guess I’ve derailed all of American politics by revealing this information.

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http://www.godsblessingsforyou.com Copie

Could some one please help me.
I am looking for an email address for the US Presidential Candidates to enable me to send them a Blessing from God certificate from the website http://www.godsblessingsforyou.com
I am confident that candidates who receive a Blessing from God will find that it provides a great boost to their confidence.

A supporter
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http://mp3worldz.com Listener

I don’t know about USA but in Russia I think Linux will be national operating system because of free.
http://hot-discussion.com Lucas

I don?t know about USA but in Russia I think Linux will be national operating system because of free.

I can agree with following opinion !! It is free and very well protected !

Regards
Lucas
T.Amoth

Don’t forget 1 of the 1st things the Bush administration did after getting into office was to essentially railroad through a settlement of the anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. Last I heard Mass. was still suing MS, but the other states settled… Funny how we don’t seem to have heard anything for a long time…
http://www.makeaninformedvote.com/informedvote Make An Informed Vote

That makes for some useful information, though I hope nobody bases their vote simply on the OS of a candidate’s server.
http://www.movie2b.com/ Movie Girl

I think Linux is the OS of the future. But it’s still a little bit hard in use. I’ll surely move to Linux when it become as easy in use as Windows do.
http://movieworldz.com Listener

Movie Girl, Linux already have good user interface and it is very easy to use it.
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http://omi.net.bd Omi Azad

Very nice article. People must vote for Linux users.
http://www.oddgods.com/articles/2008/a18a John Carlsen

Very interesting post and discussion.

FYI: I’ve adapted and updated the info and posted tables at Presidential Candidates’ Web Site Types.
http://uptodayonline.com/ Lucas

Nice article thx a lot Very interesting
http://modifoo.com Martin Weiss

Hi Doug,

I found a related article on Jeremy Zawodny’s blog,

comparing page loads of the remaining candidates.
http://netsoc.com Ken O’Brien

Barack is my boy. FreeBSD, I’m impressed. I love that the democrats are on the opensource bandwagon.
http://mp3favor.com favor

WOW, very intresting article you posted.
I will vote for Linux user
http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/ Mike Schinkel

Just goes to show that Hillary really was a closet Republican after all…
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