[luau] Census Bureau: Open Source makes sense to deliver stats on the Web

[Warren Togami]

http://www.newsforge.com/reports/02/03/20/0344221.shtml?tid=11

If you're checking out demographic information at the U.S. Census Bureau's
Web site, there's a chance the information is courtesy several Open Source
tools. Two senior technology architects with the Census Bureau's Internet
division said the low cost of Open Source software, plus strong support from
the developer and user communities make Open Source the right choice for
several Web-based projects at Census.gov.
Lisa Wolfisch Nyman and Rachael LePorte Taylor described five Open Source
Web projects at the Census Bureau Tuesday during one of the Open Source
Software for e-Government series of discussions sponsored by the General
Services Administration, the National Science Foundation and the Cyberspace
Policy Institute at The George Washington University. The talk, held at the
NSF just outside of Washington, D.C., drew about 30 government employees and
private sector developers, two thirds of whom raised their hands when asked
if they were Open Source advocates.
On several Web projects, the Census Bureau has used the LAMP suite of Open
Source tools: Linux, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database, and the
Perl, PHP and Python programming languages. In addition to saving tax
dollars, Open Source software makes sense at an agency that uses a
combination of Linux, Unix and SGI machines -- and even a couple of Windows
boxes, said Nyman.

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