Bruce Perens Becomes CEO of VC

Bruce Perens writes "In August, I accepted the president's position at Linux Capital Group, a business incubator and venture capital firm specializing in Linux. This is explained in my open letter to the free software community on the group's web site. My firm has announced its first investment, in Progeny Linux, a company headed by Debian Founder Ian Murdock, which will produce a commercial version of Debian in cooperation with the Debian developers. We will be starting and funding several other Linux companies. We now intend to show other businesses by example how to succeed while being a good citizen of the free software community."

Comments

Re:Where is RMS's share of the wealth?

[Bruce Perens]

I have already discussed this with Richard (months ago). At the moment I don't have money to contribute, but that will change. Meanwhile, Richard called me this morning and asked me to put a link on the VC firm's home page, and I did that. If there's anything else I can do for FSF, I will.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Rob! Stupid Posts? (An Answer?)

[finkployd]

I second everything you said. The IP tracing is what I've been saying all along. It would raise some eyebrows if an ISP began getting complaints from a large site like this about whoever was allocated xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx at xx:xxPM. I'd like to see the IP's posted with the message on posts like this (not automatically, by one of ./'s admins) so we could all voice our complaints to the the abuse@isp.net of the poster.

Of course, another obvious answer would be to implement a "cancel post" feature accessible to a few super-moderators that would effectively "kill" a post by setting its score to -2 or -infinity. That's an awful lot of power, though, and I think it would sit horribly with the Slashdot community at large.

I'd support that. Perhaps the stipulation is that there is a page where you could go to see these rejected posts, and the person who rejected them is listed also. This way, we could make sure that no legit posts are being "trashed".

Finkployd

Re:Standards on Commercial Viability?

[Bruce Perens]

Is every company LCG invests in expected to be profitable within a reasonable amount of time

Every company, but not every project. In general an Open Source company might have software development as a cost center and support as a profit center. That means one costs money and the other makes money, and both are essential to your business.

Do you feel LCG has the experience and contacts to help find CEO's and management, connect startups with clients outside of the Linux domain, and give advise on all the nuts and bolts of starting a new company and making it profitable?

A lot of this is what Randall and Bern bring to the table. The both have a lot of experience in negociations between businesses, running businesses, etc. And of course we're looking for more people to help with this.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Commercial Debian and Coda

[Bruce Perens]

Sun tried diskless workstations more than a decade ago, back when disks were expensive. What you need is a local disk cache of a filesystem elsewhere.

Ian has been working on distributed filesystem stuff at U. Arizona for the past few years. I think he has something that might be better than Coda.

Thanks

Bruce

Question for Bruce

[SpinyNorman]

From the Executive Summary on the Linux Capital Group web site:

VCs can make tremendous profits. For example Sequoia Capital invested in Red Hat at $3, before their IPO, and now that Red Hat has hit $300, Sequoia would
multiply its investment 100 times by selling at that price. In contrast, the typical investor was first able to buy Red Hat stock at $43, and would still make a handsome
profit but nothing near that of the VC. So you can see that the conventional paradigm of venture capital is structured so that only those who have a lot to invest can
play the game. Linux Capital Group will give this opportunity to everyone who can afford a share.

Q: Would this be a share before or after you go public?

After the post IPO success of RedHat, and now VA Linux's record breaking IPO, it seems pretty apparent that Wall Street is more than willing to pay up front for Linux gains they anticipate down the road. If LPG expects to achive a 100-to-1 return on capital, then it seems reasonable (in the current market, at least) that any LPG IPO would open way up, therefore denying any open market investors that ground floor VC type rate of return.

If you truly want to allow others in on the financial success of Linux, then the only real way to do it would be to accept pre-IPO investments on a much broader scale (i.e. from the open source/Linux community). How exactly you would qualify such people, and avoid the Wall Street sharks is a tricky problem, although perhaps limiting investments to (say) $1000 would probably go a long way towards that.

Re:Question for Bruce

[Bruce Perens]

It's after Linux Capital Group goes public, but before any of its partner companies go public.

Essentially, when a partner company goes public it is treated as a spin-off, and the Linux Capital Group stockholders get shares of the new company. They still have their Linux Capital Group shares, too. And when the next partner goes public, they get its shares, too, ad infinitum. Linux Capital Group gets some cash from selling stock after each partner IPO, and uses that to refuel the process. So I can do exactly what you want with every partner company, including Progeny Linux, once Linux Capital Group goes public, but not before. Sorry.

I don't think I can get away with taking small investments before the Linux Capital Group IPO. I'm not happy about it, but I'm not sure we have a choice. Securities law makes running a public VC firm quite complicated, we have already expended some legal services looking into that, and plan to expend a lot more.

Thanks

Bruce

Contests

[Dacta]

This is a great idea.

It would be great if there was a way to direct at least a proportion of the prizes to those who need it most, ie, without corporate backing.

The increasing number of commercial open source projects around is great, but we still need the grass-roots type projects, and contests could be a great way of supporting these.

The contest rules should dictate a particualar licence (or at least dual licencing) to a single licence (I'd prefer GPL or LGPL).

If specific prizes were offered ("$5000 for the best XML reporting tool", say) then after the contest period was finished, the authors (or a third party) could (hopefully) merge the best parts of all the entries.

I guess this would be a little like the SourceXchange.com thing, but less formal.

Another, unrelated idea is some kind of Open Source research fund where potential authors can apply for funding for their project - lots of programmers can almost afford to quit their jobs and write open source stuff, but $10,000 for six months would make it a lot easier.

The problem with Corel

[Dacta]

isn't so much what they have done, it is the way they have done it.

Corel have done a good job in their early support of Linux. However, Linux isn't a marketplace, it is a community. When was the last time you saw a Corel person on Slashdot - or on a Linux mailing list for that matter, explaining what they were doing with our baby? (Maybe I hang out on the wrong mailing lists, though)

Then there were the licencing fiascoes - first the "Closed" beta program, and then the "Over 18 only" thing, and now the "not for use in Europe" thing.

Maybe they are trying but why? Is it just to try and dispose Microsoft and to raise their stock price? I fear so. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with that in itself, but that is not what Linux is about, and so there is bound to be some friction - and it is going to get worse (not necisarily against Corel).

Re:down the rabbit hole

[Signal 11]

That wasn't what I was driving at - money changes things. It changes people, it changes countries, it changes many things. Like Midas' touch.

I'm worried that as geeks move up the social/economic ladder they're leaving behind some well-earned lessons about the price of being different. We're the stars now of our society - financially well off, we can satisfy our material wants, we work what most people consider to be ideal jobs, and we're the envy of most of the country if not the world. Can you believe, even for a moment, that this isn't having an impact?

I'm wondering what's going to happen to this group of social outcasts whom I happen to belong to - will they embrace society, or use their power to change it (thus taking the risk of losing the aforementioned economic gains)? This question is far more important than the monentary concerns voiced so far, IMO. Geeks now have both the economic power and intellectual prowness to encourage dramatic social changes. Will they take advantage of this, or trade that for financial security?

Would RMS have started GNU if he'd known?

[Bruce Perens]

Sometime yesterday, I was thinking Would RMS have started the GNU project if he'd known it would come to this? I'll see him on Tuesday and discuss it. But I'm pretty sure he would have. RMS envisioned a world of free software. He never eschewed making a living from it, in fact he consulted for Intel, making money by writing free software (enhancements to GCC) long ago. Thus, I think things are going pretty much as RMS wanted them to go in the large, but not in the small. I'm sure he would have preferred that everyone use the GPL (I would too), but he's accepted that the Open Source Definition is a definition of Free Software.

I tried to get RMS on my board, but of course he doesn't want his name used for marketing. I still expect to be talking with him regularly about my company's operations, and I plan to help out FSF in whatever way possible, with money if I can, software and other services otherwise.

Thanks

Bruce

huh?

[mattdm]

I looked at those packages, and they certainly all seem to have one big patch file that contains all patches. You care to explain what you mean further?

If the patches you're talking about are in the .orig.tar.gz, that's an even more severe problem -- no pristine source.

From the Debian Packaging manual:

As it exists on the FTP site, a Debian source package consists of three
related files. You must have the right versions of all three to be able to use
them.

Those three files are: the source, the dsc (control) file, and the patch file, if any.

Note that there's only ONE patch file.

--

Re:huh?

[Overfiend]

You obviously didn't bother to unarchive the source package.

dpkg-source -x *.dsc

For the XFree86 source package, take a look in debian/patches and tell me what you think those are.

And please don't troll. Red Hat doesn't keep their multiple patch files separate from the source archive. You have to open up the SRPM to get to them. Likewise with Debian source packages.

Not that anyone will read this now...since the article has fallen off the front page. Score one more point for Red Hat FUD.

Re:huh?

[mattdm]

You're right; I don't have access to a Debian system right now. (It's on my laptop, but the screen is having issues.) I can look tomorrow. Sorry, there's nothing I can do about that.

But I did look at the source tree on the ftp site, and XFree86 just has the three files referenced in the documentation. One .orig.tar.gz, one .diff.gz, and one .dsc. If there are other patches, where are they? In the .orig.tar.gz file? Like I said, that's even worse -- preserving pristine sources is important. But actually, they don't seem to be there either. I'll look at this tomorrow and see if they are created somewhere along the way if you use dpkg-source.

This isn't FUD, by the way -- FUD the original comment may have been, because it made an unsubstantiated derogatory comment. I'm not saying that debian's packaging system is bad in any way -- it certainly handles dependencies better than RPM. But it's not fair to say that RPM is bad without having a particular reason why, especially when there are things that RPM does do very nicely that dpkg apparently doesn't.

You're also using the word "troll" in a weird way. There's nothing in my message that's a troll in any way. And I didn't say that you didn't have to open the SRPM to get at the patches -- just that when you do, they're clearly differentiated and in seperate files, which is nice when you're making local changes. How would you go about doing this on Debian?

(It's possible that you're right, although I can't find any information to correlate what you're saying. Even though there _is_ good documentation on making debian packages, it doesn't really seem to talk about this issue.)

--

Re:the recurring communism issue

[Bruce Perens]

Please be charitable and remember that some of us are not Christians. We're still charitable. Thus, I think that name doesn't work either.

Thanks

Bruce

What other "option"?

[FallLine]

Propeitary software is a means to an end. It is just, and it produces innovative software. Though I realize this is hotly contested on slashdot, Open Source software isn't exactly a hot bed of innovation. In fact, one has to struggle damn hard to find "innovations" in, so called, "free software". When I say innovation, I don't mean mere invention. I mean, getting an idea on how to create or fundamentally improve something, and really hustling and expending countless hours/dollars to make it work.

Open source software only addresses the needs and wants of geeks, not that of the common user, and has only had limited success at that. Propietary software allows for an incentive program (which also helps organize development), that Open source software does not. This is particularly true for the boring parts of development (e.g., support, help systems, idiot proofing, and generally bringing it into fruition).

Some will say that RedHat is proof of Open Source viability in the commercial world, that "support" dollars are sufficient. This has not been proven, and is, in fact, very questionable. RedHat is not yet profitable. They haven't exactly developed a great deal of software (with the exception of, perhaps, gnome and rpm. Nothing on scale with what Sun, Apple, Microsoft, expend on it). Most all of their revenues come from SELLING the CD. If, and when, Redhat does climb to popularity, companies will begin selling byte for byte copies for half the cost, with equal convience. The only reason to buy their CD is for packaged support. This too is questionable. As another company could dedicate themselves to soley supporting RedHat (being open source this is very easy), with a higher percentage of their revenues going back into support operations (e.g., no R&D like RedHat must). I really would like to see RedHat succeed, and I'm not saying they absolutely can't (they'll atleast grow in popularity amongst geeks), but it should not be used as "proof". Nor do I see any other companies which do [expend big bucks on open source development, and make big returns].

Re:Slashdot = tabloid.

[Bruce Perens]

Understood. I think that Rob is having some problems resolving how to handle the S/N ratio without being in some way unfair or unethical by blocking people. You may have noticed I run my own weblog that is an alternative to Slashdot if you want less noise. People tell me that the two weblogs compliment each other because they fulfill different goals.

I had a great time speaking in Iceland and would love to go to Norway. If there's a conference there, tell me about the call for papers.

Thanks

Bruce

down the rabbit hole

[Signal 11]

Is it just me, or has linux started absorbing (at an absolutely incredible rate) all the qualities it's supporters initially dismissed as both irrelevant and/or evil?

Linux is supposed to be "free speech, not free beer"... yet here we are making money hand over fist. If you contributed an open source project *BLAMO!* you get The Letter and an opportunity to make alot of money.

ESR made it big (as he should.. he's on the board of directors), Bruce Perens is off now with his vulture capital friends, and Rob of slashdot fame joined up with Andover.net, now going for IPO (or maybe they have already, I wasn't paying attention).

We've been fighting all these spectres of Big Business Squashing the Little Guy, actively refuting the FUD companies throw against our cherished OS' (while replacing it with some of our own, admittedly), and essentially emulating all the behavior of the big businesses we're fighting against!

Anyone else feel like Alice after falling down the rabbit hole here?

Re:down the rabbit hole

[cdlu]

They IPOed wednesday last, aren't you glad they told us? :)

CBC had a story that mentionned it.

Re:down the rabbit hole

[the eric conspiracy]

Is it just me, or has linux started absorbing (at an absolutely incredible rate) all the qualities it's supporters initially dismissed as both irrelevant and/or evil?

Such as? Shrink Wrap Licenses? Nope. Hidden NSA keys? Nope. Undocumented APIs? Nope. Unavailable source code? Nope. DOJ Anti-trust lawsuits? Nope. Undocumented proprietary standards? Nope. Upgrade treadmills? Nope. Slow response to bug reports? Nope.

Linux is supposed to be "free speech, not free beer"...

Think about what you just wrote. "Free speech, not free beer" directly implies making money from something that is freely distributed.

Any group of people will have a collection of views on the topic that are varied. However I think that most of the leaders of the open source movement have always wanted to put forth business models that allowed both the freedom of having open software and the ability to make money from that software. Even some of the most adamant, like Richard Stallman have put forth ideas on how to do this, and have put it into action. The Free Software Foundation does after all have expenses. Programmers have to eat and pay rent (although Richard Stallman did try to live in his office).

The thing most people worry about is somebody trying to limit free speech in order to increase their cash flow. Open source or free software should not be against making money per se. Involvement in commercial activity is in fact needed to improve the quality of the software. Companies like RedHat, SGI, IBM, SuSe and so on are contributing tremendously to the advances in Linux.

The important issue is to make sure free speech continues.

Re:down the rabbit hole

[Bruce Perens]

Will money change us? Sure thing. I think however that I've been changed already. I made enough money from Pixar to live the way I want. I've a loving wife, a baby on the way, a nice home in a great place to live, the freedom to do what I want, and no debt. This before I made a cent from free software and all of the directed-shares plans. And it doesn't seem to have hurt my participation in free software so far.

When I think of money, I think of making politicial change. You can get a hint of the changes I'm contemplating if you read my Upside interview. So, you might have a bunch of free-software philantrophists working for the ideals we share, with money to support that work. Can that be bad?

Thanks

Bruce

Re:down the rabbit hole

[hadron]

And they're right. There's no private property (intellectual or otherwise), and the code is, in effect, owned in common, available to all as needed (this came from WWWebster's).

This argument has some merit, but overstates the issue. The people who call opensource people communists generally aren't interested in your definition, they are using the term as an insult, or implying that opensource people do not hold with the concept of private property in general.

I have no problem with the concept of private property. However, I do think that companies shouldn't rely on government violence to enforce software copyrights, when there are other options available to them. Proprietary software companies take the easy option, and end up screwing everyone involved.

Copyright law was not intended for software.

Re:down the rabbit hole

[hadron]

In many ways, people now being rich, having stock in Linux companies, is less worrying than the immediately previous situation, which was that many free software hackers were being employed by companies, without having much influence. Many people expressed concern about Alan Cox being employed by Red Hat, and I dread to think what the reactions would be nowadays if Linus Torvalds starting working for a Linux firm. But with independent means, they are less likely to be influenced by money-waving managers.

I'm confused by your statement that the success of open source has little to do with software development, then you give as a reason for its success, the software development model (the Bazaar) that most open source projects use.

Re:down the rabbit hole

[Bruce Perens]

Open Source never meant taking a vow of poverty. Having people be able to support themselves while making free software is an opportunity we should take advantage of to the utmost, because that way we will have more free software.

The challenge is to embrace our success without losing the qualities that got us here. If I'm not meeting that challenge, I want to hear from you just how, with details, when that happens.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:down the rabbit hole

[Bruce Perens]

I hope that people don't lose sight of why open source is successful, and how little it actually has to do with software development. It's about distributed collaboration, peer review, and the incredible accomplishments a group can make when they drop the barriers imposed on our daily lives.

I just had to smile while reading this. I mean, you know that you're talking with an ex Debian project leader and the person who proposed the Debian Free Software Guidelines to reinforce the exact principles you're talking about. So just how much do I have to change to forget about all of that?

But I accept your premise that actions speak louder than words. So, I request that you watch me. It'll take a while for you to get a read on my actions, but I think you'll like them.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Rob! Stupid Posts?

[finkployd]

You are a fucking idiot if you think I'd use my real IP to post to /.

Oh, fake IP huh? Boy you must be the most 3133t hacker of them all. Nobody can penetrate those :)

Stupid little script kiddy.

Speaking of fucking idiot, what kind of moron does the shit you are doing?

Look, I set my threshold up to 2 and you little wannabe losers disappear.

Finkployd

rpm vs dpkg

[mattdm]

I don't want to start a war here, but this comment seems unfounded: Its packaging system is just so far and away superior to Redhat's at the moment, that it borders on ridiculous. Debian's packaging system has some nice advantages (and more so as the apt front-end tools get more developed), but there are some things RPM does better too. For example, it allows multiple patches per package, which is crucial for organizing a derivative (either for public or local use) distribution. It's not fair -- or responsible -- to make blanket statements like yours without justification.

--

rpm vs dpkg (formatted properly)

[mattdm]

Urg, that'll teach me to not use the preview button. Try this:

I don't want to start a war here, but this comment seems unfounded: Its packaging system is just so far and away superior to Redhat's at the moment, that it borders on ridiculous. Debian's packaging system has some nice advantages (and more so as the apt front-end tools get more developed), but there are some things RPM does better too. For example, it allows multiple patches per package, which is crucial for organizing a derivative (either for public or local use) distribution.

It's not fair -- or responsible -- to make blanket statements like yours without justification.

--

Re:Off-topic: Congratulations on the baby, Bruce!

[Bruce Perens]

Thanks!

Yes, that's the order in which I think of this stuff, too.

Bruce

Re:In fact,

[Bruce Perens]

Well, obviously I don't want to be in the position of mediating for Debian any longer, because there is a conflict of interest. I told them that. I also told Corel months ago that I was working on a VC firm, but not about Progeny Linux because although I have been soliciting Ian to be in my company for a few weeks, that agreement only came a few days ago.

Thanks

Bruce

Karma, Shmarma!

[Bruce Perens]

Well, with all of those karma points I would have expected at least one share of Andover stock :-) I'm afraid they're worthless.

Bruce

Re:Karma, Shmarma!

[Effugas]

Well, with all of those karma points I would have expected at least one share of Andover stock :-) I'm afraid they're worthless.

Ha. Seeing your gigantic Karma rating actually got me spending a good chunk of time posting on Slashdot. I know the feeling you describe rather well ;-)

(Of course, you can't tell other users Karma anymore. I actually don't know if I like that or not.)

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

the recurring communism issue

[Bruce Perens]

The problem is that the word communism has come to mean Soviet-style semi-totalitarian socialism. I'm not a political scholar, so if you want to call what the Soviets did something else that's fine.

What we are doing here is closer to what the Soviets themselves called Glasnost, isn't it?

The concept of a commons, and the concept of helping your neighbor, precede what we think of as communism by a few millenia. So, maybe we should call them something else.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Rob! Stupid Posts?

[Zontar The Mindless]

The biggest problem seems to me that this flamebait is sucking up all of the moderation points, so no worthwhile moderation is done.

MODERATORS: Please give this post a "5".

If any of you have any moderation points left, that is...

Zontar The Mindless,

Re:In fact,

[Bruce Perens]

Actually, it's not in direct competition with Corel, and I was considering it but nothing was agreed. Remember that the comment, in a Debian mailing list, got rather blown out of proportion and put where I didn't intend it to be. Still, I should have been more circumspect. If you want to know if I screwed up and said something I should not have, yes, I screwed up and said something I should not have.

That doesn't mean that I'm happy with the situation, though. They don't need that in their license, and it's an insult to all of the legal minors who wrote parts of their system.

Bruce

laizzez fairre (spelling error?)

[extrasolar]

In some sense it is laizzez faire (however its called). AFAIK, that means hands off economy without government intervention. If you s/economy/development and s/government/company then you understand how I can say this. It also means that people are motivated by self interest rather than altruism. I would like to say that free software developers are into it for their own benefit more than for charity. I know I would be programming right now if GNU never happened but it would probably be propietary and it would probably be shareware. Now there is a philosophy I beleive in that lets me contribute to the world.

I think the references to communism spring up from thinking of software as a product rather than information. Now, which it is up to debate but I am inclined to think the latter. Also communism only happens when there is depression or human suffering. People don't advocate communism when everything is cheery.

Welcome To Fundage

[Effugas]

We now intend to show other businesses by example how to succeed while being a good citizen of the free software community.

Ooh. Nice little swipe at Corel, there.

(Bruce, unfortunately, has expended much effort converting them into an open source outfit...really, I think we need to start communicating with both *Marketing* and *Legal* at *EVERY* company that's doing something in Open Source. The former failed at Sun, and the latter failed at Corel.)

That being said, I think there's some interesting impacts to be seen. Debian may have its annoyances, but lets not forget: Its packaging system is just so far and away superior to Redhat's at the moment, that it borders on ridiculous. Corel should be praised highly for showing that the traditionally least user-friendly Linux(ok, past Slack) has some amazing potential hidden inside.

OK, so now that Linux has some money, here's the question: What do we wanna see come out of the fundage? Here's *my* candidates:

1) Get some money flowing to a few critical projects. VNC, the any-to-any screen transfer system, needs a crew of crack developers! The ORL(now AT&T) guys have done an amazing job, but they don't have time to take VNC to where it really can be. Mindterm, by contrast, has probably the most unsung hero in the entire Open Source world toiling away, putting out revision after revision of a *world class* SSH client written in 100% Pure, Finally-Got-Its-Killer-App Java. This project is going exactly where it should be, and we ought to do what we can to keep it that way.

2) Contests. A major currency of Open Source is recognition. Lets divide the year into seasons and create cash prizes for best Open Source releases. Two types--one, for individuals, with the obvious stuff(best newcomer, most useful, etc.). Another, for schools. Lets reward classes. Lets reward departments. Linux is much cheaper for the cash strapped to deploy, particularly if you consider that our development environments are free too. Some very exciting stuff has been done teaching kids Python; this is a model that deserves further research!

More later. I'm interested in reactions.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Slashdot = tabloid.

[Bruce Perens]

I do work the press - it's an essential skill for business and the kind of advocacy I've been doing for years. But this page is going to end up being 99.6% your comments and 0.4% my posting, so I think the system tends to converge on some sort of objectivity.

If anyone wants to interview me and write an objective article, my email's up there in the header.

Thanks

Bruce

Hey... over here...

[Booker]

This is an interesting story, let's not clutter it up with this discussion. That just furthers the aims of the abusers below.

Come on over here and we can talk at length. :)
----

It's the porting issue.

[Bruce Perens]

What I was thinking of there was porting. What if Intuit approached me with a project to port Quicken and TurboTax to run natively on Linux? Should I turn them away, or take on the port and help spread Linux? Now, porting Quicken doesn't mean that nobody will use GNOMoney, and I've argued before that TurboTax is a special case and probably won't be handled in Open Source. So this is a serious question.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Debian

[Bruce Perens]

Debian is an excellent distribution. But go back and read the Wichert Akkerman interview a few days ago. He's the Debian project leader, and most of the questions that were directed to him were about problems in Debian that could be solved by a few salaried people working on the stuff that isn't getting done, or isn't getting done in time.

Note also that Corel is a Debian derivative and that SGI/VA/O'Reilly are also doing something with Debian, and also Kachinka, I think, so this is not exactly a new idea. But our plans aren't the same as theirs and there is room for lots of ingredients in this stone soup we're cooking.

Thanks

Bruce

Where is RMS's share of the wealth?

[SurfsUp]

I tried to get RMS on my board, but of course he doesn't want his name used for marketing

Remember that scene in Pirates of Silicon Valley where the Woz decides to hand over some of his own shares to long-time Apple employees that somehow never shared in the wealth-generation of Apple's IPO? Well, with double handfuls of OS luminaries now vaulted into the range of of multi-millioniare and billionaire it's getting harder and harder to explain why the man who started it all has no, so far, gotten a share of the wealth.

It's getting to the point where he should just be handed a chunk of the next Linux rocket, don't expect RMS to do the homework - we ought to know by now that he won't.

This is getting kind of embarrassing - who is going to take care of RMS???

Re:Where is RMS's share of the wealth?

[Bruce Perens]

Richard did get a McArthur foundation grant, which he did not donate to FSF. He invested it, and it is now enough so that he can live without having to have a job for the rest of his life even if FSF can't pay his salary.

I also suspect that Richard is a beneficiary of some of the directed-shares programs, but is simply being tastefully quiet about it.

But point taken. I also want to see Linus taken care of, but I'm sure he already is.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:The other side of the hole?

[Bruce Perens]

I promise not to lose sight of my goals of social change and I'll remember the goals behind the GPL. I can't promise not to be caught up in the money game, many people would consider that by being a corporate CEO I am already caught up, and for me to make such a promise would simply not sound sincere. But I'm not looking for a Lear jet or to be admitted to the aristocracy, if that's what you are thinking of. I'd settle for sending Stanley to college and having a retirement fund for when we are old and sick.

I've tried to make the point that money is power for political change, so maybe you'll grant that some good could come out of it.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:commercial Debian

[Bruce Perens]

Ian is starting with scientific and technical users. I'm extremely interested in user-friendliness, and I'd like to work on that, when it's possible for Ian's company to do so. I'd like to work on a kind of user-friendliness that won't drive away the clueful users. Do you really have to treat the user like an idiot to make the system easy to use? I doubt that.

Thanks

Bruce

Not corrupting Debian?

[exa]

This is an e-mail I sent to Bruce Perens:

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Congratulations on your new business effort. However, there is a point that I'd like to make. This effort will of course not hinder Debian development at all. Or will it? I didn't quite understand the "which will produce a commercial version of Debian in cooperation with the Debian developers" phrase about Progeny Linux in the /. article.

I very much hope this will not damage the already stalled new maintainer process since I'd really like to be a Debian developer.

Thanks for your attention,

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Re:Not corrupting Debian?

[Bruce Perens]

No, it won't hinder Debian development. In cooperation with the Debian developers means we will submit patches back to them, communicate with maintainers of stuff we're working on, get their opinions on stuff, contribute services and hopefully money, and in general be good members of the community. We even put their current project leader on the investment company's advisory board - he's advising the company that owns Progeny Linux. But Debian is free to ignore us.

Thanks

Bruce

Enough Enough Repetition Repetition !!

[Zontar The Mindless]

Yes, there's a +1 for longish posts, which I've always thought was an invitation to flooding. While I do find the occasional nonsensical spouting off from The Glorious Meept! or The Natalie Naked & Petrified Guy to be somewhat amusing, too_damned_much = too_damned_much.

Perhaps (long) posts could be parsed for excessive repetition? (Couldn't CmdrTaco or somebody work a little RegExp magic to accomplish this?) Those showing it wouldn't receive the +1, or maybe even would get an automatic -1.

Could something like this be implemented to be dissuade the l337 skr1p7 k1dd13z from turning a page with Hell, after spending 20 minutes scrolling down, I've even forgotten what this story was about already...

-- Z.

Zontar The Mindless,

The "Officers"

[gregbaker]

The list of corporate officers is interesting. Bruce (CEO), Ian Murdock (the "ian" in Debian) (CTO), and two guys with financial backgrounds as "Chairman and Business Development director" and CFO. Nobody has said much about Ian being there.

Also interesting, Wichert Akkerman (current Debian leader) is on the Advisory board.

At the moment, it looks like it's a Debian VC firm. I'm sure that will change, though. (Even if it doesn't, I'm all for more money in the Debian world.)

Greg

Why criticize this?

[_blueboy]

It seems many people think this is a bad thing, that somehow we shouldn't be making money off free software. I see this as very similar to the independent music scene, where some people dislike a band simply because they "sold out". But if a band has greater freedom to produce the music they want to, then in the end everyone benefits. The situation is the same with free software.

Think about it. Why should we care if companies are making money off free software? If the codebase is still open then it should make no difference to us. In fact, I would argue that this is not only not a negative move, but a positive move that will benefit the free software community.
Three reasons: first, when money is on the line, companies are _forced_ to make a good product, or it won't sell (No M$ bashing, you must admit that their products are all good in one way or another). If the product doesn't sell, they will fix it.
Second, when you are writing software for profit it gets done (usually). This means that instead of release dates like "version 0.2 will be out as soon as I get some time off from my hectic schedule" will become "version 2.0 -- out February 2000"
Third, with more and more profit based companies contributing open source code (or vice versa, open sourcers making a profit), the big companies are becoming convinced that open source is a viable option. As this increases, we will see more and more proprietary code opened, which, no matter how you look at it, is a good thing.

Feel free to suggest other reasons why this is a good thing. To Bruce, congratulations, and best of luck.

Re:Bruce: What is a qualified investor?

[Bruce Perens]

Unfortunately, a qualified investor is someone with a 6-digit amount of money to put in, and enough money that they are not investing so that if we fail it won't blow their whole wad. Everything I said about the small investor being able to get in does not apply until our IPO. At that time, you will be able to buy into all of the partner companies pre-IPO by purchasing stock in Linux Capital Group (this is not an offering).

I'm not happy with the fact that I can't open it to the small investor yet, but I really don't want to run awry of securities law, etc.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:That's what Code is!

[Bruce Perens]

I thought you were with it.

I sort of thought that might be how Coda works. But you don't expect me to know everything, do you? Ian is the network filesystem expert. Somewhere on the U. of Arizona web site you can find all of his distributed filesystem work. He can no doubt tell you all of the pros and cons of his project over Coda in great detail.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Defending Open Source from the Horde

[Bruce Perens]

Yes, there are already opportunists. There's one company that filed their S-1, which is a xerox of Red Hat's S-1, before they did any real work, and keeps coming out with mock-up products (they scratched the word Red Hat off the CD and wrote the name of their company in crayon).

The only thing we can do is put some quality people in quality companies. With my company, you know you're investing in a president who has been in Linux since 1994 and a CTO who has been in it since 1993, and they both have a solid grounding in free software, and some finance people who have really excellent qualifications. We have to promote that so that people will invest in us instead of the fly-by-nights.

Thanks

Bruce

Beowulf cluster of Linux related VC firms

[zairius]

Just think how far Linux would go if there was one of these!

Apologies in advance.

I didn't need excess karma anyways :)