I need your signature to help me protect Open Source

Hi, this is Bruce Perens. I need your signature to help me protect Open Source.

Please Add Your Signature. 1964 people have added their signatures to this document.

The Open Source Initiative, the organization that certifies Open Source software licenses, is holding an executive board election soon. I am standing for election. The board is self-electing, and I'm told I don't have a chance unless I can show community support for my candidacy. Can you sign below to help me?

One problem I'd like to help solve is the over-representation of vendors, particularly the kind that have an Open Source product as their profit-center rather than part of operations. The vast majority of Open Source developers, paid or volunteer, are not in that sort of business, yet vendors tend to dominate the leadership of organizations like OSI and conferences about Open Source in business, to the point that many people have been led to believe that they are the most important participants. I'm not anti-vendor, I've built several of them and currently own one. But I think that vendor-domination of Open Source inevitably dilutes the rights of everyone else. With its increasing participation in Open Source, there's even a chance that Microsoft could be offered an OSI board seat. [Update: Mike Tiemann says they are not considering Microsoft. But obviously the board constituency is changing in this election. I want to be there to vote against an MS candidacy next year, and the year after that.] I have been an outspoken opponent of vendor excesses, fighting SCO, the Novell-Microsoft agreement, etc., for more than a decade. Help me continue that work.

Another problem is the failure to reduce the number of different licenses in general use. My own work in this area shows that only four licenses, all compatible with each other, can satisfy all common business and non-business purposes of Open Source development. Three of these licenses have essentially the same text, and the fourth is very short. Life would be easier if more projects used them. While it would be difficult to shut down approval of new licenses, I think OSI could be more proactive at reducing license proliferation.

Regarding my qualifications: I created the rule-set that OSI still uses today. I released my first Open Source program twenty years ago. I have been an Open Source evangelist for a decade. For an example of my evangelism, see this talk at Stanford, and this address to the U.N. World Summit [1].

Unfortunately, running for the OSI board is going to be painful. Some oppose my action against vendor excesses like the Novell-Microsoft agreement. And there's bad blood from the past - some of it my fault. I'm sure this campaign will inspire ad-hominem material about me on the net, etc. That's another reason that I'll need your support.

Please sign now. Please publish a link to this where you can. If you wish to discuss this, please email bruce at perens dot com or call 510-984-1055 [2].

Notes:
  1. Yes, I have verified that these can be played with Free Software. Try VLC.
  2. This line rings in our home and my office. To protect our sanity, the phone doesn't take calls when we'd be asleep.

Please Add Your Signature. 1964 people have added their signatures to this document.