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.

[Bruce Perens]

OSI hasn't told me who else is running. And probably most of those folks would rather die than let MS on the board. But some wouldn't.

Bruce

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[Bruce Perens]

I imagine that 99% of the folks at Microsoft have their heart in the right place. Certainly most of the ones I meet do. There are a few who do not at the top, and unfortunately the rest have to take orders sometimes. As we can see from the recent shenagians around the ISO vote, Microsoft has not given up its habit of playing dirty.

I have been on committees with them before, for example the patent policy board at W3C. I know how to deal with it professionally.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[Bruce Perens]

OSI is generally recognized as the organization that tells you if a license claiming to be Open Source actually is Open Source or if it's in some way giving you less rights than should come with Open Source. Those rights being defined in something I created 10 years ago called the Open Source Definition, which people seem to mostly still agree with. The main function of that board is to interpret those rules and certify licenses.

I think the "high school" nature of this is because the board is self-elected. Otherwise, there would be some formal structure that you could see around the election. The last time I asked Mike Tiemann, the closest definition I got of when the election is was "before the April board meeting", which I think is April 2.

I don't know that MS is a candidate, indeed I have not been told about any candidates. I don't think they'd win, so far. I trust most of the current board not to elect them. I have been on other commitees with Microsoft folks, for example the patent policy board at W3C. Unfortunately, they still like to play dirty. Someone like me can help to balance them.

Bruce

Re:Fighting Microsoft at OSI.

[asuffield]

I imagine that 99% of the folks at Microsoft have their heart in the right place. Certainly most of the ones I meet do.

My own observation of their employees has been that the problem is, by and large, not one of intent. Microsoft is a textbook example of how you can pave roads with good intentions. Much of the harm they do isn't deliberate, it's a mixture of bad planning, worse execution, and generally being oblivious to the idea that they aren't perfect (at least until it's too late to do anything about it).

Re:Let me get all of this.

[Bruce Perens]

Well, if I had kept running both those projects for 10 or 12 years, this would not have happened. So, it's my fault too. But then again, maybe I would not have a child, and maybe I would not have achieved some of the other important things that I've done. In general, I'm better off for having a life - I was a lot harder to get along with before I had one :-)

Bruce