Bruce Perens Aims For OSI Executive

mutube writes "Open Source advocate Bruce Perens began petitioning for support in election to the OSI Executive Board. Because it's a self-electing board, demonstrable community support is needed to attain a seat. Perens is standing on a platform of reducing over-representation of vendors in OSI leadership in favor of developers. In his petition notice, Perens suggests that recent Open Source involvement by Microsoft could lead to their being offered a place on the board. With his background fighting SCO and the Novell-Microsoft patent agreements, Perens would be a good counter-balance."

Comments

Want to discuss this with me directly?

[Bruce Perens]

I usally respond to Slashdot comments if I see them. But you are also welcome to call me at 510-984-1055, or to email bruce at perens dot com . The phone rings in my office and home, and stops ringing when we would be sleeping.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Want to discuss this with me directly?

[Bruce Perens]

I'm not sure how I can support you in any way in this endeavor but I wish you all the luck in the world.

Thanks! I am conscious that nobody listens to me unless I have the support of folks like you. There are mistakes I've made, that I would take back if I could. I'm trying very hard not to make them this time.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Want to discuss this with me directly?

[Bruce Perens]

Would you be a proponent of the phrase, "OSI Certified," and discourage the use of the far more ambiguous, and non-trademarked term "open source"?

Sorry, no. And this is not because I disrespect anyone, it is because erosion of the term will not improve anything. Although "Open Source" is not federally registered, it is a trademark, and has the same status as "OSI Certified" because the attempt to register "OSI Certified" failed - I don't know why.

"Open Source" includes both source code and the set of rights defined by the Open Source Definition, which I created as the Debian Free Software Guidelines and which only later was taken up by OSI. "OSI Certified" means that OSI agrees that the license in question meets that definition.

I think the term you are looking for is "Disclosed Source Code". That means you can see the source code, but there are not necessarily any rights connected with that. There are many names that can be used for similar things: Shared Source: Microsoft's flavor, various different licenses with no rights in common. Some folks can see source code in some cases. Creative Commons: Usually used for non-software assets, the only common right between all of the licenses is that you can read or view them. And there are things called "crowdsource", "Public Source", and so on.

Bruce

Re:BusyBox Funding?

[Bruce Perens]

Unfortunately, one of those developers tells me that every line of code I wrote in creating Busybox is gone from the code base, and that I have no rights :-( . I am not sure I believe that, but there is no good to be had in further engaging with that developer, I have bigger battles to fight.

Bruce

Please sign the petition

[Bruce Perens]

Please sign here.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:BusyBox Funding?

[Bruce Perens]

Unless your contribution consisted only of small, isolated bits, which as I understand it was not the case, even if there is nothing left that is recognizably your original code, BusyBox as a whole is still a derivative work and you therefore retain rights in it, no?

I don't want any money. And regarding settlements, SFLC generally gets money to support its own operations, and I suppose that the plaintiffs want some money to compensate their efforts. They are after all consultants who get paid for their time.

But I am a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing.

Bruce

Re:BusyBox Funding?

[asuffield]

Unless your contribution consisted only of small, isolated bits, which as I understand it was not the case, even if there is nothing left that is recognizably your original code, BusyBox as a whole is still a derivative work and you therefore retain rights in it, no?

The legal theory of homoeopathic copyright (ie, derivative works that don't contain any of the original content) is one that has been often proclaimed by lawyers but never firmly decided in court. So realistically, no (unless you have the time and money to push through a case that would set a precedent in this area).

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[Bruce Perens]

Christ, you sound like you're trying to convince Christians to expel the moors from Spain. Microsoft's just a company like any other, making software just like any other. If Microsoft's "an enemy of free and open software" then what is Adobe? Intuit? Apple? Etc? Are any companies *not* enemies of free and open software?

Hi Blakey,

There is a scale of corporate collaborators with the Open Source community. It runs the range of Benefactor, Symbiote, User, Parasite. All companies can be fit somewhere on this scale, sometimes we argue about what label one should get. NASA, back when it sponsored the development of most of the Linux network card drivers, was a benefactor. They didn't really plan to use them for their own operations. Most companies that attempt to be a sincere partner with the community are symbiotes, and they return value to the community in exchange for the value they get for their business, for example by developing more Open Source. Users are folks who just passively use the software without doing anything for the community - but we like to have Users because they give us the artistic gratification of seeing our software used and they sometimes become Symbiotes. Parasites are folks like SCO, that take value from the community in a harmful way.

MS, unfortunately, while they are spewing patent FUD at us, while they are attempting to pervert the standards vote at ISO by creating dozens of new members for a single meeting, Microsoft doesn't belong on the partner scale at all. Apple tries to participate in Open Source, sometimes not successfully as when they took Open Darwin private, sometimes successfully as when they support the CUPS printer management system. Adobe, I don't know enough about their recent activities, but they made some open standards that we use very extensively, like Postscript, Type 1 and PDF. They also have been putting DRM in PDF, etc., which is generally negative.

So, Microsoft is not just like any other company just like you are not like any other person. We have to make judgements based on the way they act.

Bruce

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[pintpusher]

I have mod points, but have to point this out so that people aren't confused.

Parent is not Bruce Perens. its .Bruce Perens.

note the period at the beginning of the name...

Not the real guy!!

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[Bruce Perens]

The parent post is a fake. The real Bruce Perens has user-id 3872, not one of those six-digit ones.