White House moves to open-source programming for its Website

A programming overhaul of the White House’s Web site has set the tech world abuzz. For low-techies, it’s a snooze — you won’t notice a thing.

The online-savvy administration on Saturday switched to open-source code for www.whitehouse.gov — meaning the programming language is written in public view, available for public use and able for people to edit.

Yet the system — known as Drupal — alone won’t make it more secure on its own, cautioned Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

“The platform that they’re moving to is just something to hang other things on,” he said. “They need to keep up-to-date with the latest security patches.”