Yet another reason for governments to use open source software: it promotes global standards. And a government's compliance to such standards, writes IBM's Bob Sutor, is emblematic of its commitment to its people.

Matthew Burton has a vision of supporting government with an open software platform managed by a foundation. A "Mozilla for government" if you will. He'll be online today at 2pm answering questions and taking comments about this vision as well as his other projects. Join in!

The online mini-rising to protest Barack Obama's support for the Congressional compromise to renew the FISA legislation has been getting a lot of attention, with much being made (by us and plenty of others, including Ari Melber in the Nation, The New York Times, et al) that activists are using Obama's own social networking platform, my.BarackObama.com, to organize and channel their efforts to get him to alter his stand. Indeed, as of today the Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right group has swelled to more than 14,000 members, which makes it the single largest self-organized group on the whole platform, which reportedly has close to a million registered members.

This is certainly a good example of what thinkers like Clay Shirky and Mark Pesce have been talking about, when it comes to "ridiculously easy group formation" (qua Shirky) and how "Hyperconnectivity begets hypermimesis begets hyperempowerment" (qua Pesce). But right now the main reason this development is important is NOT because the group itself is that powerful; it's because attention-amplifiers in the blogosphere and the MSM are covering the story and thus threatening some of Obama's hard-won image as a change agent, which could conceivably weaken his vaunted fundraising and organizing machine. So while the Obama campaign is keeping a poker face about the importance of some of its members using the master's tools to challenge his position, it is no doubt paying attention, too.

The fact is, we're all entering completely new territory here. There have always been efforts to influence political candidates to take or change positions during a campaign (or afterward), but we've never before had a national campaign create an open platform for mobilizing supporters AND THEN seen a salient chunk of those supporters openly use that platform to challenge the candidate on a policy position. Indeed, while the net is inherently a two-way, many-to-many medium, no politician has yet used it to listen to his supporters as a group. Yes, the Obama campaign has asked its supporters to share their stories about their health care woes, and some of those anecdotes have made it into the campaign's blog or policy papers. But we have no norms for a collective, public discussion--even though we now have the capacity for one.

From Obama's "bitter" brouhaha to making new rules for the superdelegates, Internet activists are upending this presidential campaign.

This weekend, Civicspace on Demand (CSoD) launched. For $50 bucks a month you get a "complete, integrated solution for your community website, online donations, blast email, and supporter database needs." If you thought Drupal and CiviCRM were too complicated, think again. CSoD has spent the past two years, rethinking the layout and workflow. Instead of harvesting the open-source community, they have spent a considerable about of time providing feedback and improvements to the community.