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

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[ushering05401]

Unfortunately such a withdrawal of OSI participants in response to MS involvement would be a PR victory for MS.

One of the most common perceptions I find among my MS clients is that open source and zealotry go hand in hand. If MS appears to be embracing the community and the community rejects them the concept of the open source community as a collection of immature idealists (read not corporate America ready) would be cemented in many minds.

When MS does begin their full force campaign to infiltrate the OSS community it should be met with carefully considered diplomacy, not blunt force resistance. Anything else will be a victory for MS.

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[belmolis]

OSI does not have any members, only a board of directors. Microsoft should not be allowed on the board barring a dramatic and clearly sincere shift in its position and actions, because it cannot be relied upon to act to promote open software.

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[Bruce Perens]

Well, if they would stop doing the patent FUD, and stop stuffing ballot boxes at ISO, and in general stop the dirty fighting, we wouldn't need diplomacy. But I agree that they can make us look bad if we won't come to the table with them. We just have to make sure they don't leave with the table.

Bruce

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[mrchaotica]

a lot of people just don't give a damn

Then that doesn't count as "hearts in the right place," now does it?

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[perlchild]

So in other words, as long as open source(which includes, and requires, a cleaner "process" than Microsoft) wants to fight Microsoft on OSS's own turf(clean process) they lose(not corporate), on Microsoft's own turf(shady legitimacy), they lose, on neutral ground(which I haven't seen yet, as everyone seems to have some form of bias(or can seem to, if you're arguing against them), they also lose.

The opposition from OSS to Microsoft usually stems from people who wanted to be Microsoft friends, and who saw how Microsoft treats its friends/partners. (Long list, from Stacker to kerberos implementations gone wrong, etc...) If you are in OSS, you can see that Microsoft has a history of cheating, you can (with some justification) expect them to try to cheat you, but the business guys expect you to ignore this, or else, YOU are against the corporate ethos? Diplomacy is all well and fine, but it's usually best employed between parties whose good faith is equal.

Let's just agree corporate America isn't ready for open source, I for one am ready for the next debate. Microsoft will not clean up its act without a BIG stick on the nose. So far, it's only got a rolled up newspaper, and only when it got caught red-handed. They have not shown "good faith", they have done damage control. They've never formally renounced "embrace/extend/extinguish" as a modus operandi. This is the people we have to be diplomatic with... Can we just agree we don't want to play, and go home? There's been a very long, bloody history of bad faith(mostly on their part, but yes there have been zealots on the other camp too, however, there's only been casualties on one side), too big to ignore unless something changes(they could formally drop OOXML, and embrace ODF(not in a year, not after the next shareholders meeting, but now!) something LOUD, something that shows they believe in openness(not necessarily open source) that they are willing to face the anger of their shareholders over it. (I've kept fantasizing they'd opensource office instead, but that won't happen that's just a fantasy).

If Microsoft continues with software as a service, they will either become an unstoppable juggernaut, or make themselves completely irrelevant. They don't need the opensource crowd, so what diplomacy we do is just allowing them to dodge bigger and bigger fines from regulatory body, not enticing, encouraging, or helping them believe in openness. And right now, they are making money in giving just the apparence of openness, and corporate America does not care, can not care, will not care, but will bemoan its fate when a stronger Microsoft has it again by the balls and ask us, "where were you, we knew you hated them, why didn't you warn us, you're it guys, etc...". And we'll just tell them, we've been telling you, you just told us we were fanatics... Well sometimes, even fanatics have real opponents, people who believe just as fanatically(if only at the top) in exactly the opposite idea.

I for one think openness means Microsoft cannot bully the market, since I've not seen them win market share on product merit in quite some time, I think they need to bully the market in order to enhance their shareholder value. More openness would be against increasing their market capitalisatiion, and therefore a bad thing, for them. It's mutually exclusive, we can build a market where everyone can play, or Microsoft can build a market where they give permission to play, it's not exactly a place for compromise...

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[zotz]

"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."

Bruce,

I think you are missing one key thing users give us... Just by using... Network effects.

I would have a much easier time asking people to switch from office to openoffice.org if everyone else was already using openoffice.org and not office. (I hate using that .org, has the other openoffice not gone away yet?)

We would be getting much better hardware support if we had more plain users. This is a positive input plain old users give us. Even if they don't contribute money or code.

Your thoughts?

all the best,

drew
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