Bruce Perens

Bruce Perens

Bio

Bruce Perens is a leader in the Free Software and Open Source community. He is creator of the Open Source Definition, the manefesto of the Open Source movement in Software. He's founder or co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, The Linux Standard Base, Software in the Public Interest, and No-Code International. Perens released his first Free Software program, Electric Fence, in 1987. He is creator of Busybox, which has spawned its own development community and is part of most commercial devices using embedded Linux.

Perens is a member of the board of directors of Open Source Risk Management Inc. and Elara Fusion Inc. and a major stockholder of Progeny Linux Inc. He is an elected director of Software in the Public Interest, Inc.

Perens is series editor of the Bruce Perens' Open Source Series line of books with Prentice Hall PTR publishers, with 15 titles published so far. The books sell well in retail stores, even though their texts are released under an Open Source license. Perens is Senior Research Scientist for Open Source with George Washington University's Cyber Security Policy Research Institute. Perens previously spent two years with HP as Senior Global Strategist for Linux and Open Source, and was president of Linux Capital Group, a venture fund that specialized in Linux.

Perens spent 20 years in the computer graphic animation industry, 12 of them at Pixar Animation Studios. He has a credit on the films A Bug's Life and Toy Story II. (bio from http://www.perens.com/Articles/ShortBio.html)

Why he is important

"It might be easier to list the things Bruce Perens has not done. One of the most respected figures in the open source movement, Perens is the co-founder of organisations the Open Source Initiative, the Linux Standard Base and Software in the Public Interest, as well as the former project leader of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution endeavour. He is also the author of the movement's declaration of intent, the Open Source Definition.

During a varied career in the software industry, Perens has also been credited as a software engineer on the animated films A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, run his own venture capital company and served as senior strategist for Linux and open source at Hewlett-Packard between 2000 and 2002.

Perens has also worked as a consultant with IBM, Novell and Borland, been a director of open source intellectual property insurance firm Open Source Risk Management and is a major stockholder in Progeny Linux Systems. In June 2005 he joined open source services start-up SourceLabs as the company's vice-president of developer relations and policy." (http://www.cbronline.com/article_cbr.asp?guid=20E5F34B-5D51-4215-97B6-44181E083C43)