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]

SWEEEET, I now have parens' phone number! I'm going to show it off to all my friends!!! zomg! ;)

I'm already married :-)

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: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.

[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.

[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.

[mdemonic]

Parent is not Bruce Perens. its .Bruce Perens.

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

Maybe he's hidden