Bruce Perens – the guy that helped coin the term open source and author of the Open Source Definition, is on a mission. He wants back into the Open Source Initiative (OSI) the ‘defining’ body for Open Source that blesses what is and isn’t Open Source.
Considering that this is the tenth year of Open Source (which I blogged about in Feb), how could the OSI not want its’ ‘Father’ back?
In my time writing for InternetNews.com I’ve had the opportunity to chat with Perens numerous times and he always has some neat insights. While Perens has helped me on stories (and the Open Source community in general) he now needs help – to get on the OSI executive board.
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.
So far Perens petition for community support has garnered over 1000 signatures – Will your signature be one of them?.