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

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

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: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