This is the question posed by Will Hurley of BMC. After chatting with him today about life, the upcoming elections, and the open source community in general, I decided that I am pretty curious about how to answer that question myself.

I encourage everyone to throw their 2 cents in, vote in the poll, and join the discussion. What do we think the candidates need to know about open source? Here's your chance to tell them (and the rest of us).

From whurley's blog:

Have any of the 2008 candidates ever even heard the words 'open' and
'source' used together in a sentence?

My guess is probably not, which is sad. Think about the current issues
around patent reform. Does open source play a role? If so, shouldn't
the candidates have some basic knowledge of open source?

The poll will be open until 11:59am Tuesday the 12th, and we'll post the results shortly thereafter.