'We the People' goes open-source

The Obama administration's "We the People" online petitions platform has been open-sourced, allowing other individuals or groups to tailor the system for their own use.

The "We thePeople" code was released under the GNU General Public License yesterday, and is now available on GitHub.

Macon Phillips, the White House's director of digital strategy, posted on the official White House blog:

When President Obama talked about We the People at the Open Government Partnership last year, he promised to, "share that technology so any government in the world can enable its citizens to do the same." Now anybody, from other countries to the smallest organizations to civic hackers can take this code and put to their own use.

A number of petitions on "We the People" have elicited responses from the administration in the past, including protests regarding the SOPA and PIPA acts, reducing student debt, and the immigration system. Active petitions on the Web site include a request to create a no-fly zone in Syria, the prevention of "police brutality" against civilian protesters, and removing "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency.