The moderate firebrand
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With credentials in both the development and corporate evangelism of Linux, Bruce Perens is one of the most prominent voices in the world of open source.
When SCO Group first filed suit against IBM in March 2003, alleging that parts of Linux had been copied from IBM's version of Unix, one name was on the front pages of the business press lambasting SCO's attempts to damage the corporate penetration of
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Perens' credibility as a spokesman for both the developer and the industry sides of the open source movement comes from a career that spans the two - as a highly respected open source programmer and as a (now-lapsed) evangelist for Hewlett-Packard (HP)'s Linux push.
Perens was one of the pioneers of open source. Having been an advocate of the approach since 1987, he sprung to prominence in 1993 when he lead the development of Debian Linux - an operating system that was deemed robust enough to be used on the Space Shuttle.
As Linux became a hot item, Perens started his own Linux venture capital and publishing companies, increasingly appearing on commercial radar screens.
As Linux started to take a place in vendors' enterprise computing strategies, he was hired by HP to push the business case for open source. Behind that move was newly-appointed CEO, Carly Fiorina: according to Perens, she felt the company needed someone who could make the company much more Linux friendly to wary corporate executives.
Focal point
But Perens did not last long at HP. When HP bought Compaq, Perens' came under the management of VPs from the Compaq side, who valued their relationship with software giant Microsoft a lot more. Perens, an outspoken critic of Microsoft, paid the price when Microsoft's group VP of platforms Jim Allchin complained to HP about something he had said.
Since then Perens has been a $200-an-hour consultant, advising on anything from development to Linux licensing issues. And it is operating licensing that has him riled.
He has become the focal point for the opposition against SCO and its claims that Linux is riddled with Unix code that infringes its intellectual property rights.
Whereas Linux Torvalds has largely stayed away from the fray and the eclectic open source purists Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman have blustered noisily, Perens has occupied the middle ground, quietly working to get to the bottom of the case. He maintains that SCO and its owner Canopy Group have a very different agenda in mind - one that will become clear as the case proceeds.
Proprietary Linux
When not pursuing SCO, Perens is fighting to 'take back' Linux. He believes the operating system is being railroaded by the big distributors. They are stretching the open source ethos to its limits, he says.
"There's a thing called 'proprietary open source', where it's open source, but you still have to pay a lot of money for it. That's the business Red Hat is in. I'm going to do something about that," promises Perens.
Free should mean free, he says. In 1987, he had his first experience of open source, developing a de-bugging application and posting it on the 'net. "Someone else pulled it down and realised it needed better documentation if was going to be deployable When that was finished, the co-developer posted the manual back online."
That's the true business benefit of open source, he emphasises - both companies able to mutually benefit from the labour of the other at minimal cost.
