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Bruce Perens Canned by HP
bmarklein writes "Bruce Perens has been fired by HP for "Microsoft-baiting". This was linked in part to the HP-Compaq merger, since Windows is now a much bigger part of HP's business."
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This shows the reach and depth of fear that Microsoft's monopoly can instill in even the biggest and baddest companies on the planet.
I doubt that this came from a purely internal HP-Compaq decision. The forces that be in Redmond probably played a role.
What is Bruce on to next?
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Balancing Linux and Microsoft
.sincerechoice.org), and its own set of principles. Mr. Perens asserts that governments could get huge cost savings and encourage the spread of open-source software by purchasing only software that operates well with other programs. Under his proposal, software companies would be required to supply software with open technology standards and open file formats that can be used by outside software developers, without having to pay royalties.
By STEVE LOHR
For nearly two years, Bruce Perens was a senior strategist for open-source software at Hewlett-Packard -- an evangelist and rabble-rouser on behalf of a computing counterculture that is increasingly moving into the mainstream. Part of the job description, he was told, was to "challenge H.P. management."
His last day as a Hewlett-Packard employee was 10 days ago. The parting was amicable, Mr. Perens said, but he was fired -- "officially a termination," he noted. "It came after a long, long warning," Mr. Perens explained. "The thing that I did that was most hazardous for H.P. is the Microsoft-baiting I tend to do."
A spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard declined to comment on Mr. Perens's departure, citing company policy against making public statements about why individual employees leave.
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But, according to Mr. Perens, a handful of forces combined to make his exit from Hewlett-Packard inevitable. After it bought Compaq this year, the combined company became the largest single buyer of Windows for personal computers and data-serving computers, and thus more dependent on Microsoft. A rising threat to Microsoft is GNU Linux, an operating system distributed free and developed using the open-source model in which communities of programmers donate their labor to debug, modify and otherwise improve the code.
After the merger with Compaq, Hewlett also became the largest vendor of Linux-based server computers, ahead of Dell Computer and I.B.M. Yet Hewlett's bet on Linux still pales compared with its reliance on Microsoft. And after the merger, it was mainly former Compaq executives who took senior positions overseeing the Linux business.
In the premerger Hewlett, Mr. Perens, a leader in the open-source movement, enjoyed a lot of independence. When speaking to potential Hewlett customers on Wall Street and elsewhere, he would make the case for Linux, extolling it as a reliable and secure operating system that also allowed corporate customers to avoid being locked in to proprietary software like Microsoft's Windows or Sun Microsystems' Solaris.
Mr. Perens did not have to make the pitch for Hewlett as supplier of choice for Linux-based servers, services or support. That chore fell to Hewlett's sales people. "It was a pretty unique job that existed because of the H.P. culture," Mr. Perens said. "I would still be at H.P., I think, except for the Compaq merger."
Yet beyond the postmerger atmosphere at Hewlett, Mr. Perens also says that he had been taking a more outspoken stance against Microsoft recently. "Microsoft is out to crush Linux as a competitor," said Mr. Perens, who became truly galvanized after the emergence in May of a Microsoft-backed industry group, the Initiative for Software Choice. Besides the chip maker Intel, a close Microsoft ally, most of the other 20 or so members are smaller foreign companies or trade organizations.
The software-choice group sees a threat in what it has identified as 66 legislative proposals, government statements and studies promoting open-source software in 25 countries, including Germany, Britain, China, Peru and Brazil. Some of those legislative proposals would require the use of open-source software in government, but most of the government steps are efforts to ensure there is an alternative to Microsoft in their critical software markets.
The Microsoft-backed group says its purpose is to promote even-handed competition based on the merits of products, instead of a government bias for one kind of software. But as Mr. Perens sees it, the software-choice group has another agenda. "Its principles are nice-sounding words," he said, "but what they really say is, `Let's maintain the status quo.' "
Mr. Perens has stepped in himself and started an effort to respond to the Microsoft-backed group. His initiative, called Sincere Choice, has its own Web site (www
"The royalty-free patent issue is crucial because the companies with huge software patent portfolios, especially Microsoft and I.B.M., have huge tolls booths on the Internet that can limit the spread of open-source software," Mr. Perens observed.
Mr. Perens, 44, has regarded technology as a force for personal freedom since he was a teenager in the Long Island suburbs of New York. He was a ham radio enthusiast, ran a pirate radio station in Lido Beach, N.Y., and was briefly a "phone phreak," who could trick the telephone network into giving free long-distance calls.
His introduction to computing came in college, when he worked at the radio station at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury. Mr. Perens was a station manager, and one of his duties was to prepare the weekly logs of programs to be broadcast, as well as commercials. It was a job for a computer, he figured, and he taught himself the Basic computer language and wrote a program to handle the logs.
The appeal of computing proved irresistible. "I got so involved in the computer that I didn't go to classes anymore," recalled Mr. Perens, who never got a college degree.
Much of his considerable programming skills over the years since have been self-taught, a trait fueled by his early experience with formal education, when he was briefly misdiagnosed as mentally disabled (it was a motor-deficit problem that he soon outgrew). "All of this is about empowering the individual with technology," Mr. Perens said. "That has been a lifelong thrust."
Mr. Perens eventually joined Pixar, where he worked for 12 years on hardware and software tools for the animators of "Toy Story," "Toy Story II" and "A Bug's Life." While working at Pixar, he became more deeply involved in the emerging open-source movement and with Linux.
Having left Hewlett, he is talking to other companies about doing consulting work. "Open source doesn't mean you take a vow of poverty," Mr. Perens said.
Yet Mr. Perens is also deeply committed to the values that he believes the open-source movement embody. "I'm sorry that I had to leave H.P., but I'm not going to shut up about my views," he said. "I'm not just going to sit back and be a quiet engineer. I have a two-year-old son and I don't want him to grow up in a world that is less free.
Hey Bruce, why not run for congress?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I wonder why the link got broken - I think I even double-checked it. Anyway, maybe it works this time?
HP needs a big cash inflow to survive. Microsoft currently supplies that. Linux currently doesn't. Case closed. Corporations tend to think of themselves of amoral money-making ventures, and often, with huge companies like HP, any overtures to supporting open source are simply PR moves. PR moves are usually less important than simple cash inflow. If the inflow is going to disrupted by PR (like Bruce Perens), they just chop it off.
I once had someone I admired tell me that "You shouldn't live for anything you aren't willing to die for". I've tried to incorporate that in my decision processes. Clearly, Bruce believes his child, and his freedom is more worth living for than his job at HP.
I get his motivation, I understand where he is coming from, and so, I can relate to him, and less readily dismiss him as a zealot, crackpot, or trouble maker, which is sadly the case with some other prominant free software advocates.
So, Bruce, thanks. You have my respect, even if you haven't got a job.
...or integrity for that matter?
Funny. Compaq (now HP) is running large ads in the trade press touting that they were the first major company to support Linux and Open Source.
Now they fire a major advocate? Sounds like the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
Oh, wait, that's what those corporate types mean that a merger brings synergies and the opportunity to eliminate redundancies.
Well, so far HP/Compaq sounds like a typical merged company: the power politics of the officers of the originating companies are more important than anything else. They'll either spend 5 years trying to get their shop integrated (meanwhile facing dwindling market share), or they'll undo the merger, with the usual corporatespeak (divestiture, focusing on core business, spinning off unprofitable divisions) that all come down to 'we screwed up; please don't hurt us!'.
</cynism>
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Why shouldn't they?
Simple example. It's like CIA getting rid of their resident Arab intelligence advisor, to replace him with some professor from US. It's a bad strategy.
Sometimes you just have to hold on to people who know the emerging markets, even if they do not share the same ideology. Especially now, in a hostile economy, with all the stock market distress, companies are careful not to overrun their budget, and looking for ways to cut costs. What better way to save few million dollars than to replace Windows 2000/XP with Linux. You kill 2 birds with one stone. Increased stability + cost efficiency.
Furthermore, HP/Compaq are in the hardware business. As long as they sell their plastic boxes the investors will be happy.
Dell = 1
HP/Compaq = 0
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We just bought a half million dollar linux cluster from them. We bought the cluster pre configured and ready to plug in. We told the sales people if it is not linux we won't even think about it. The interesting thing is that we blew off another half million dollar purchase with them because their solution did not support linux. So to make a long story short they gained half million because of linux support but the lost a half million due to non linux support.
here
"I am no longer with Hewlett-Packard. If your company would like to use my expertise in forming an Open Source policy and processes, or operating a relationship with the Open Source developer community, please contact me."
If more people thought this way, the world would really be more freer.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
If HP is so threatened by a single person like Perens, they must really be in deep trouble. Apparently, The New HP is trying hard to become The New Unisys. Too bad--DEC and HP used to be nice companies. Compaq just keeps eating up one company after another, digesting them, well, and you know what comes out the other end.
What makes me nervous is that Microsoft might have threatened HP in some way as a partner. They obviously wouldn't want a partner promoting their product with internal factions insulting it. For that matter, HP 's argument might be that it's hard to sale your product, loaded with Windows, when you have vocal employees talking about security and usabiltiy problems.
Can I bum a sig?
After it bought Compaq this year, the combined company became the largest single buyer of Windows for personal computers and data-serving computers, and thus more dependent on Microsoft.
I don't get it. If I moved from n to 1 on the list of a vendor's customers, why wouldn't I see increased leverage with my vendor? The story implies that being the number one customer of Microsoft is tantamount to losing leverage ("more dependant")?
It's a semantic argument to be sure, but regardless of what Bruce said about Microsoft you would think that they wouldn't want to damage their reputation with their number one customer, would you?
Or is this all about MS playing Dell and HP off each other?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But... you are being naive if you think the list you describe in your parody doesn't exist. I have been in meetings (not in the computer industry, but the principle is the same) where such things are discussed. Every successful business does indeed do that sort of thing. Given the threat that Linux poses to Microsoft's revenue stream, it would be foolish of them not to hold such discussions.
sPh
>Where I work, stability and cost efficiency has
>nothing to do with our choice of OS. We need
>something that will run all those damned legacy
>apps we still have left over from the DOS 6.22
>days. It's so much easier, it seems, to accomodate
>these old apps then to replace or upgrade them.
>A lot of other big companies probably stay on
>Windows for the same reason.
OK, that's the client side, but you could still start turfing NT/2000 in your server room.
HP/Compaq (or Dell or IBM) would love to sell you some servers.
Firstly, if HP decides to drop Linux, then his job is necessarily obsolete. In other words, it would be in his own best interest to keep Linux afloat at HP.
Secondly, his job was probably questionable at best, more PR than anything else, so his firing may very well have been inevitable. In other words, he had nothing to lose. In fact, he may have been fired, in actuality, because he was a waste of resources.
Thirdly, his longer term "career" prospects would almost certainly have been harmed if he had appeared anything less than a free software zealot (because he has staked this niche out as his bread and butter--just look at his resume).
Fourthly, maybe he cares for his popularity more (made almost exclusively through his position) than his job.
I, at least, don't see any reason to necessarily ascribe any noble purpose to this man, especially given the kinds of behavior that I've seen from him in the past. If a priest got fired from the Catholic church for maintaining and flaunting a theological position (esp. one that he was long associated with), then would you necessarily presume it was because he was principled or because he might have had some thing other in mind? The point is simply that just because he surrounds himself in something that is "not for profit" or "noble" does not make his own personal ends any more noble.
Bruce Perens leaving HP was reported in an Infoworld article on August 15. Although it is essentially the same story, the emphasis seems somewhat different. That article suggests that HP was restricting the level of activism, and Bruce would leave rather than put up with that. It does not mention Microsoft-baiting.
Note also that HP is cutting jobs at the moment; people who are given the boot get some money, those who walk don't. I would not read too much into "being fired" rather than "resigning" at the moment, it could just be a procedural device that Bruce goes as part of the cuts, so gets some money on the way out.
After it bought Compaq this year, the combined company became the largest single buyer of Windows for personal computers and data-serving computers, and thus more dependent on Microsoft.
Am I the only one who thinks this is just ass-backward from the way you'd expect things to be in an open market? So, HP/Compaq becomes MS's biggest customer. Back in the olden days, it would mean that *MS* would quake in fear and bend over backwards not to piss off their biggest client, lest they lose their business. Nowadays, it appears to mean that HP/Compaq needs to be careful lest they upset their vendor.
It's ridiculous. And, frankly, it should stop. Too bad short-term shareholder value has to take precedence over long-term strategic planning (like finding a way to get out from underneath MS's thumb).
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Look at the history of OpenMail, for example:
- When OpenMail was first released, they had a Windows NT version in the works. Microsoft told them to knife it because it would threaten Exchange. They did.
- When Linux became popular, OpenMail began another rise. It was about to become prominent again, and possibly threaten Exchange again. This time, Microsoft told them to kill the product completely on all platforms. And they did.
Now that Perens guy is a nuisance. He makes too much noise, so Microsoft told them to fire him. Of course, they did.I have no respect for a company that is such a pushover, and certainly no respect for a company so tightly bound to Microsoft.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
After it bought Compaq this year, the combined company became the largest single buyer of Windows for personal computers and data-serving computers, and thus more dependent on Microsoft.
The logic of this is exquisitely twisted. Hp-Compaq is now by far Microsoft's biggest customer, so the logic goes, Microsoft has the most leverge over them.
Excuse me?
I think anybody who doesn't think that Microsoft's use of monopoly power needs to be severely restrained needs to think this one over. How can there be competition when companies fear a vendor so much they can't even flirt with the competition?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Does this not seem wrong to anyone else? Sense when does the supplier dictate the terms and not the largest customer? This, more than anything else I think, demonstrates that Microsoft has gone from being a viable solution for decent software to a company that needs to be reigned in.
The problem now, though, is that market forces will have to accomplish this. We already know that the government is incapable of stopping Microsoft from doing what it wants. Short of breaking the company into two or three parts, things will continue the way they are.
It's not possible to argue against Linux? Not to be an ass or anything, but FreeBSD is just as malleable as Linux, and has the bonus of not falling under the syphilis of software licenses.
Please cite examples where competent Windows administrators who kept up with Windows patches were stymied by a Windows problem that kept mission-critical systems down.
For every example you provide, counter-examples can be found for Linux. The VM upheaval in early 2.4 (so-called "stable" series). The ext2fs corruption in early 2.2 (once again, so-called "stable" series).
Anybody with blind faith to The One True Operating System doesn't understand very much about computing at all. Yes, Linux is malleable to the point of silliness, but why make a new hammer out of clay when Microsoft and IBM already have steel hammers that are have a much longer, and more proven, track record?
...that he kept pestering Carly to change the company name to GNU/HP
---
Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
If all of our advertisements were like this, I don't think I'd even bother with blocking popups.
Now, I must go buy something at random.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
For that matter, HP 's argument might be that it's hard to sale your product, loaded with Windows, when you have vocal employees talking about security and usabiltiy problems.
Microsoft doesn't seem to have a problem with one of its own doing the same.
My spoon is too big.
"A corporation has no soul to damn and no body to kick" (variously "kill", "punish").
This comes from the Baron Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor of England in the 1700's and as far as I can tell (http://www.xrefer.com) the full and correct quote is :
"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like."
Or you might prefer this from Ambrose Bierce :
"Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."
More at http://www.endgame.org/primer-quotes.html. These quotes (naturally) apply to HP, to MS, to Dell, Red Hat and so on
... let's all stand up.
sulli
RTFJ.
I know I say it just about every time I see you post here; but thank you so much for looking out for people who don't care. It's a daunting task, at best, just know that there are several million (a minority, for sure) of us that truely appreciate everything you've done for us and the OSS movement(considering we'd be calling it something else without you).
;)
You are the level-headed balance between sometimes feuding, always ranting zealots.
On a side note: I made my neighbor watch RevolutionOS with me and I think she's got the hots for ya!
You take care of yourself now, and don't be a stranger.
put the what in the where?
Yesterday, Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, came out in support of the 1633 house arrest of Galileo Galilei during an address to industry executives.
"Pope Urban the Eighth had every right to do this.", Ms. Fiorina exclaimed. "Mr. Galilei knew that this 'Sun belongs in the Center' heresy was dangerous stuff and he should have known better than to go around spouting off about it. If I were Pope, I would have canned his ass much, much sooner."
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Another example of ongoing Windows instability was the IIS 4 server on NT 4, which leaked memory something horrible when ASP was used, resulting in busy sites needing to restart services and/or reboot servers every few hours in order to keep websites running. For some time, Microsoft ran a private mailing list ("ASPPrivate", iirc) for users experiencing this problem - mostly large website customers. I'm not sure when this was fixed, if ever - I think that Win2K and IIS5 came out before the problem was ever fixed on IIS4, and Microsoft's strategy for addressing customer concerns was simply to stall for many months and then tell customers to upgrade their OS.
Anyone who tries to hold up Microsoft OSes as comparable to Linux, or any Unix variant, in terms of stability and reliability, probably has no experience of *nix, stability, or reliability.
Another issue, perhaps not as major, is uptime. Windows still requires reboots if you look at it funny - even 2000 and XP. At sites I deal with that have a mixed server population, I regularly see *nix servers with uptimes in the hundreds of days, where the Win servers are lucky to have a couple of months of uptime.
For the most part, you're right. However, many companies end up with large management infrastructures designed for one platform or another. Also, IT departments tend to be trained on a handful of platforms. For every additional platform a company is required to support, significant additional cost may be incurred. For example, perhaps the poster's company already has all of its web apps running on an Apache/PHP/Linux platform. They may have decided that it does not make sense to support an additional platform for their n'th web app. In this case, a requirement of "must run on Linux" might be more reasonable.
BRENT ROCKWOOD, EST'd 1975
Stop selling Windows to HP? Let's not get crazy here! MS still has to turn a profit, they aren't going to just cut off their largest partner cold turkey.
Raise their prices? Yeah, maybe a little bit. But, keep in mind that one of the strengths of the HP/Compaq alliance is all of the corporate accounts that they have. MS knows that they need to own corporate computing; if they push HP too hard, they force HP to find a solution to the problem by pushing more open source solutions out the door.
And I wouldn't be so quick to discount MS's fear of judicial backlash if they act in an overtly anticompetitive manner. MS is still trying to cut deals with the DOJ, so they have some concern about the issue.
Are we sure this was the "Real Bruce Perens" - check his employee number to be sure.
(play on his old sig)
However, since the founders died, the company looks to have been taken over by managers who are primarily interested in their paycheck, not the well being of the company. For example, one of the driving factors behind the Compaq merger was the fact that Carly got a $70 Million bonus check if the merger went through. Lord knows what she would have earned had the Price-Waterhouse acquisition taken place.
The corporate logo "HP Invent," alludes to an inventive spirit at HP but unfortunately, that spirit is the spirit of HP-past. I've seen exactly one interesting idea come out of HP in the past 2 years and that was a cooling device - not something that'll generate billions in sales. Carly was a History major at Stanford so she's obviously got some smarts. But they're the wrong kind - she doesn't have the technological background to recognize really good technical ideas when she sees them and so must rely on her staff to evaluate them for her. The inevitable "what does she want to hear?" filtering takes place and in that process and HP is all the poorer for it.
The next time the HP board goes looking for a new CEO (like in the next 18 months maybe...), hopefully they'll choose someone who not only has some sales smarts but is also technologically competent. And perhaps, if they've learned anything, the compensation plan will reflect the CEO's effect on HP's bottom line, not how many pointless mergers the CEO steers the company through.
Sometimes you just have to hold on to people who know the emerging markets, even if they do not share the same ideology.
True, but lots of corporations don't believe this. Profit in modern corporations is like God in organized religion. Large corporations say they're about Profit, but they are really about maintaining the corporate culture. Anyone who isn't a true believer must go.
The corporation I worked for was, for the most part, staffed at the line-management level with mindless functionaries. We would piss away hundreds if not thousands of dollars every week for the sake of doing things the company way. We'd bend over forward time after time after time to accomodate repeat customers who were losing us money by the continued presence of their job in the store. Why? Because corporate culture demands not profit, but accomodation and competition. Don't piss anyone off! Don't let them go to the other company! If it were about profit, we would have sent these problem customers to the competiton. They could have crippled our competition in no time at all.
(I'm not pro-profit in any big way, but I do think that a genuine profit motive makes a company a better member of its community than corporate culturalism, by way of ordinary free-market forces. I think it's sad that ruthless profit-mindedness would actually improve the current situation.)
Or look at election workers. I saw some on television the other day after local primaries and they were jumping up and down like little kids because their candidate won. That wasn't about believing in and striving for an ideal, or doing an important job; that was about Our candidate won! Yay!
I feel that over time, this culturalism percolates to higher and higher levels in any given social structure. Without some kind of check against culture becoming the end instead of the means, soon the entire institution in question is run by these tribal idiots. At this point, the people serve the culture instead of the culture serving the people.
Ellen
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
Libertarians are FAR closer to Republicans than they are to Greens or Democrats
Libertarians can be social, economic or both. A true libertarian would be both and believes in equality of opportunity *both* socially and economically. A true libertarian is Darwinian. These are anti-capitalistic, since capital is a lever of ability, not a measure of it.
Greens (and Democrats) are socially liberal but economically centrist, as such are only half way off a true Libertarian on one axis, the economic, and very similar on the alternate social axis.
Republicans are socially conservative or even authoritarian; this is at least half off the social axis. Republicans promote the status quo, are anti-progressive, pro-capitalistic and pro-monopolistic, again at least half way off a true libertarian.
Therefore Green and Democrat are certainly closer to a true libertarian than republicans.
Disclaimer: Although I work for HP, these are my personal views and not those of my company.
Linux commoditizes the operating system. HP recognizes it. Everyone recognizes it. HP intends to capitalize on it and make some money. Many HP engineers use linux on a daily basis. We will always be into linux and free software, if only to give us a bargaining chip with Microsoft!
We understand the reasons Bruce has previously communicated for leaving HP. Though we wish he was staying because he's so damn cool, we understand that he may be better able to follow his dreams elsewhere. Bruce isn't pissed at HP.
HP has a business relationship with MS, but we aren't afraid of them. Business relationships are about making money. If our relationship with MS remains profitable, we will continue it. If our relationship with free software, open source, and linux remains profitable, we will continue it. That's how business works. We're here to maximize shareholder value. If free software remains economically sound (and it will), the community has nothing to worry about.
WD Out.
She's up in 2006. We really need a primary opponent as she was co-sponsor of CBDTPA (S.2048) and USA PATRIOT. I'll give you the maximum allowed to defeat her.
sulli
RTFJ.