The historic U.S. Presidential election has come to an end with Barack Obama emerging victorious against John McCain. Obama will become the forty-fourth President of the United States and the first African-American to be elected for the highest office.

As the global economy continues its slide, U.S. politicians have staked out their positions at the stimulus trough, stopping only long enough to blame the other party for the world's problems. Now, more than ever, we need to focus on sound policy, not savvy politics. President Obama ran on the promise of bipartisanship but has come up against the stiff reality of a deep Republican-Democrat divide.

Much noise has been made in the past week or so about President-elect Barack Obama's creation of a governmental chief tech officer position. My question is: What will be their stance on open source? Will they lean towards it, mandate it, forbid it ... or ignore it entirely? I looked into it, and came away feeling we had much bigger problems looming.

Senator Barack Obama and the Democractic National Convention Committee,

In his campaign speeches, Senator Obama often evokes images of citizen participation in the governmental process. He proclaims that his message of hope is built on the foundation of mutual respect, and the prospect of working together to return the government to the hands of the people.

The November election brings with it the promise of changes, new beginnings, and hope for those who've endured the past 8 years with less than an enthusiastic attitude. The choice of President and Vice President means far less to most of us than the people they choose for Cabinet positions.

During a keynote speech at this year's DrupalCon in San Francisco, David Cole, a Senior Advisor to the CIO of the Executive Office of the President, announced that the US Presidential web site developers are contributing some of their custom code to the Drupal project

President Obama came to office with the promise of change. His administration has pledged to create an environment of openness and participation. Some have already called him the “open source president” such as consultant and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos. There’s no better time than now. Transparency builds trust. Participation solves problems.

When I heard U.S. president-elect Barack Obama make his "lipstick on a pig" remark while running as a candidate back in September, it got me thinking about language, and how it can be used to deceive as easily as to explain.

Since forming in 2007, the vendor-neutral nonprofit consortium Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) has been working toward raising the awareness of open source in enterprise through a combination of education and marketing. As the group prepares to enter the new year, the OSA announced today that a new leadership team is poised to take over.