Campaign web site software is often poorly written. If you enter a negative number in the amount field you can usually transfer from money FROM the campaign TO your bank account.
Okay, not really. It's probably a refund. Not sure what the exact specifics of the transaction are. We get our data from OpenSecrets.org and they list the same negative contributions on their site.
Wow, this is great. A web app ABOUT the contest. How meta! Seriously though, we are really honored that Wired would support the contest like this.
And just to clarify, the entries were not limited to GPL: "All software you write has to be licensed under the MIT, New BSD or the GPL family of licenses."
This isn't quite getEveryDollarSpent, but check out http://usaspending.gov/. The site tracks all federal contracting dollars spent. It has an API and a fairly detailed set of data.
Rather than one giant government API, we will probably see each agency slowly create more meaningful ways to get at their data. I expect there to be some exciting open data initiatives from the Obama administration.
jcarbaugh won't say this, but the Sunlight Foundation to which he works for is pretty much pushing the government to adopt API standards. They were the folks who were partially responsible for this great link among other amazing products.
I've been outed! And there goes my plan to covertly push my radical government transparency agenda. Damn you, ALee!
I've only been involved in this for a little under two years and it is amazing to see how quickly the government has become interested in open data. There is still a LONG way to go, but I think we are going to see some great things in the coming years.
