Bruce Perens on the Status of Open Source

Lars Lehtonen writes to tell us that Bruce Perens has posted the text of his LinuxWorld press conference. In his talk he takes a look at many of the hot topics surrounding the open source community including ODF, NTP vs RIM, and GPLv3. From the article: "It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."

Comments

Re:Conspiracy Theory 101

[TheRaven64]

And then you have this story, which seems to put him firmly in "KOOK" territory.

That, at least, puts him in the same category as most well-known F/OSS advocates. Apparently outspoken is the new sensible.

Why's he so famous in the Linux crowd?

He was project leader of Debian for a bit, and was the primary author of 'The Open Source Definition' (an obfuscated version of the Free Software Definition, based on the Debian version, but with more equivocation). For more information, see bhis bio.

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Bruce Perens]

Tom Adelstein dug up a connection between Preston Gates and Ellis and the BSA. It's here.

Bruce