Clarks' campaign is going open source with the launch of Clark TechCorps. Taking a page from Dean's book, Clark is looking for some volunteer programmers to build software to build an online Clark community. The software will be distributed under a BSD license. From a Wired news article:

Dean technology staffers said they welcomed Clark's open-source initiative. "We both have the same exact problem: We need to mobilize our grass-roots base. There are vendors who have tools that help, but the complete toolkit doesn't exist. The pieces are out there, but there's no solution," said Zack Rosen, a Dean technology developer involved with DeanSpace.

Like the Dean campaign, Clark supporters adopted open source for both idealistic and practical reasons. "Open source for us symbolizes organizational transparency. We really feel that it's important that all development we do has this methodology behind it," said Clark TechCorps project manager Josh Hendler.

Open source also offers concrete advantages in a campaign environment, where people are both chronically short on time and reluctant to spend money on anything but advertising and fund raising, Clark technology director Josh Lerner said.

From Wired News: Clark Campaign Going Open Source
Referenced Mon Dec 29 2003 09:55:12 GMT-0700

You might be asking yourself why they distribute the software. The answer is: they have to. If they run it all on their servers it becomes "official" campaign material. That leads to legal issues and makes it harder to distance yourself from some of the crap that will inevitably be posted.