Whitehouse.gov goes Drupal – this was a headline on all technology blogs. This alone is a huge step for Drupal. It has proved itself and the debates like Drupal vs. Joomla or Drupal vs. Wordpress are now over. Buytaert’s followers will just go “yes we can”.

But it’s also a big day for Open Source as a whole since the Whitehouse.gov website runs now on a LAMP solution. And if it’s good enough for the WhiteHouse, then it’s good enough for companies.

Back in the days, Microsoft’s solutions were considered to be the (only) “safe choice” for IT managers to make. Linux servers or open source implementations were considered to be…experimental at best, and that if you want a bullet-proof and reliable infrastructure you should always go with Microsoft. In reality nothing could be further from the truth, as most Microsoft servers I’ve encountered so far were inferior to their Linux/Unix/Macintosh counterparts.

The FUD that Linux and open source are not suitable for big companies or governments has received today a(nother) blow. I consider that this move should be widely imitated by governments in Europe, as it will create jobs here and we won’t spend billions of euros importing software from the US.