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82-472: The program began as Google Highly Open Participation Contest during 2007–2008 aimed at high school students. The contest was designed to encourage high school students to participate in open source projects. In 2010, the program was modified into Google Code-in. After the 2014 edition, the Google Melange was replaced by a separate website for Google Code-in. Mauritius , an African country, participated for

164-406: A Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program to support open source innovation. The adoption of open-source software by industry is increasing over time. OSS is popular in several industries such as telecommunications , aerospace , healthcare , and media & entertainment due to the benefits it provides. Adoption of OSS is more likely in larger organizations and is dependent on

246-541: A bug needs to be fixed in their project. This is established by communicating with the OSS community through avenues such as bug reporting and tracking or mailing lists and project pages. Next, OSS developers select or are assigned to a task and identify a solution. Because there are often many different possible routes for solutions in OSS, the best solution must be chosen with careful consideration and sometimes even peer feedback . The developer then begins to develop and commit

328-507: A copy of the license is provided to recipients with the code. One important legal precedent for open-source software was created in 2008, when the Jacobson v Katzer case enforced terms of the Artistic license , including attribution and identification of modifications. The ruling of this case cemented enforcement under copyright law when the conditions of the license were not followed. Because of

410-751: A formal social contract for Debian. In a blog posting, Perens claims not to have made use of the Three Freedoms (later the Four Freedoms) published by the Free Software Foundation in composing his document. Perens proposed a draft of the Debian Social Contract to the Debian developers on the debian-private mailing list early in June 1997. Debian developers contributed discussion and changes for the rest of

492-467: A maximum of US$ 500. There was a grand prize of a trip to the Google headquarters for an award ceremony. Each participating open source project selected one contestant to receive the grand prize, for a total of 10 grand prize winners. Students must be between 13 and 17 years old (inclusive) to participate. In addition, students must upload parental consent forms as well as some documentation proving enrollment in

574-690: A means of marketing the free and open-source software idea to business people and mainstream who might be more interested in the practical benefits of an open source development model and ecosystem than abstract ethics. He states that open source and free software are only two ways of talking about the same phenomenon, a point of view not shared by Stallman and his free software movement. Perens postulated in 2004 an economic theory for business use of Open Source in his paper The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source and his speech Innovation Goes Public . This differs from Raymond's theory in The Cathedral and

656-758: A meeting with the President of the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of parliament) in Italy and testimony to the Culture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies; a keynote speech at the foundation of Norway's Open Source Center, following Norway's Minister of Governmental Reform (Perens is on the advisory board of the center); he provided input on the revision of the European Interoperability Framework ; and he

738-454: A new bug. Early releases : The first version of the software should be released as early as possible so as to increase one's chances of finding co-developers early. Frequent integration: Code changes should be integrated (merged into a shared code base) as often as possible so as to avoid the overhead of fixing a large number of bugs at the end of the project life cycle. Some open-source projects have nightly builds where integration

820-471: A non-profit research and development organization to address technologies involving Open Source, Open Hardware, Open Standards, Open Content, and Open Access to Research. In April 2022 he divorced himself from the organization and reported he was starting a new charity, HamOpen.org, to redirect his focus, and align with the ARRL organization for their liability insurance benefit. HamOpen has been most visible supporting

902-420: A pre-university program. Google partners with certain open source organizations, all of which have had previous experience working with Google open source programs like Google Summer of Code . These organizations come up with "bite-sized" tasks that are self-contained, designed for pre-university students to complete. When the contest begins, students can register and claim tasks. Once claimed, students will have

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984-508: A public good as it is available to everyone and does not decrease in value for others when downloaded by one person. Open source software is unique in that it becomes more valuable as it is used and contributed to, instead of diminishing the resource. This is explained by concepts such as investment in reputation and network effects . The economic model of open-source software can be explained as developers contribute work to projects, creating public benefits. Developers choose projects based on

1066-442: A set period of time to complete the task and can receive help from the mentor and the organization's community. Students may ask for deadline extensions if needed. Students who complete one task earn a certificate. Students who complete three tasks earn a T-shirt in addition to the certificate. There is a maximum of one T-shirt and one certificate per student. At the end of the competition, each organization will choose two students as

1148-447: A similar way user scripts and custom style sheets allow for web sites, and eventually publish the modification as a fork for users with similar preferences, and directly submit possible improvements as pull requests . The Open Source Initiative 's (OSI) definition is recognized by several governments internationally as the standard or de facto definition. OSI uses The Open Source Definition to determine whether it considers

1230-592: A software license open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines , written and adapted primarily by Perens . Perens did not base his writing on the "four freedoms" from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which were only widely available later. Under Perens' definition, open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on

1312-751: A special event along with the Minister of software and innovation of Chubut Province, in Puerto Madrin, Patagonia, Argentina. He keynoted the Festival de Software Libre 2013, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. In 2014–2015, Perens took a break from Open Source conferences, having spoken at them often since 1996. In 2016, he returned to the conference circuit, keynoting the Open Source Insight conference in Seoul, sponsored by

1394-528: A tool for young people to learn advanced technology and networking, rather than something that preserved antiquity and required new hams to master outmoded technology before they were allowed on the air. Perens lobbied intensively on the Internet, at amateur radio events in the United States, and during visits to other nations. One of his visits was to Iceland, where he had half of that nation's radio amateurs in

1476-422: A victory for OSS supporters. In open-source communities, instead of owning the software produced, the producer owns the development of the evolving software. In this way, the future of the software is open, making ownership or intellectual property difficult within OSS. Licensing and branding can prevent others from stealing it, preserving its status as a public good . Open source software can be considered

1558-572: A year after co-founding it. In February 1999 in an email to the Debian developers mailing list he explained his decision and stated that, though "most hackers know that Free Software and Open Source are just two words for the same thing", the success of "open source" as a marketing term had "de-emphasized the importance of the freedoms involved in Free Software"; he added, "It's time for us to fix that." He stated his regret that OSI co-founder Eric Raymond "seems to be losing his free software focus." But in

1640-404: Is a good or service, what can be considered a modification, governance through contract vs license, ownership and right of use. While there have been developments on these issues, they often lead to even more questions. The existence of these uncertainties in regulation has a negative impact on industries involved in technologies as a whole. Within the legal history of software as a whole, there

1722-539: Is absolutely another terrific way that individuals and organizations choose to contribute to open source projects. Groups like Open Collective provide a means for individuals to contribute monthly to supporting their favorite projects. Organizations like the Sovereign Tech Fund is able to contribute to millions to supporting the tools the German Government uses. The National Science Foundation established

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1804-544: Is done automatically . Several versions: There should be at least two versions of the software. There should be a buggier version with more features and a more stable version with fewer features. The buggy version (also called the development version) is for users who want the immediate use of the latest features and are willing to accept the risk of using code that is not yet thoroughly tested. The users can then act as co-developers, reporting bugs and providing bug fixes. High modularization: The general structure of

1886-404: Is innovative since open-source programs are the product of collaboration among a large number of different programmers. The mix of divergent perspectives, corporate objectives, and personal goals speeds up innovation. Moreover, free software can be developed in accordance with purely technical requirements. It does not require thinking about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of

1968-560: Is legal variety in this definition. Some jurisdictions attempt to expand or reduce this conceptualization for their own purposes. For example, The European Court of Justice defines a computer program as not including the functionality of a program, the programing language , or the format of data files. By limiting protections of the different aspects of software, the law favors an open-source approach to software use. The US especially has an open approach to software, with most open-source licenses originating there. However, this has increased

2050-468: Is theoretically challenging in economic models, it is explainable as a sustainable social activity that requires resources. These resources include time, money, technology and contributions. Many developers have used technology funded by organizations such as universities and governments, though these same organizations benefit from the work done by OSS. As OSS grows, hybrid systems containing OSS and proprietary systems are becoming more common. Throughout

2132-586: The New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab . After that, he worked at Pixar for 12 years, from 1987 to 1999. He is credited as a studio tools engineer on the Pixar films A Bug's Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999). Perens founded No-Code International in 1998 with the goal of ending the Morse Code test then required for an amateur radio license. His rationale was that amateur radio should be

2214-674: The Second Amendment to the U.S. constitution , stating that he does "not believe in private ownership of firearms" and that he would "take away guns currently held by individuals, without compensation for their value." He reiterated this view in a June 2014 interview in Slashdot, and in November 2017 on his Twitter account. Perens is an avid amateur radio enthusiast ( call sign K6BP ) and maintained technocrat.net, which he closed in late 2008, because its revenues did not cover its costs. Perens

2296-447: The copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration , meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine

2378-889: The distributed version control system (DVCS) are examples of tools, often open source, that help manage the source code files and the changes to those files for a software project in order to foster collaboration. CVCS are centralized with a central repository while DVCS are decentralized and have a local repository for every user. concurrent versions system (CVS) and later Subversion (SVN) and Git are examples of CVCS. The repositories are hosted and published on source-code-hosting facilities such as GitHub . Open-source projects use utilities such as issue trackers to organize open-source software development. Commonly used bug trackers include Bugzilla and Redmine . Tools such as mailing lists and IRC provide means of coordination and discussion of bugs among developers. Project web pages, wiki pages, roadmap lists and newsgroups allow for

2460-458: The Bazaar , open-source influential contributor Eric S. Raymond suggests a model for developing OSS known as the bazaar model. Raymond likens the development of software by traditional methodologies to building a cathedral, with careful isolated work by individuals or small groups. He suggests that all software should be developed using the bazaar style, with differing agendas and approaches. In

2542-459: The Bazaar , which having been written before there was much business involvement in open source, explains open source as a consequence of programmer motivation and leisure. In February 2008, for the 10th anniversary of the phrase "open source", Perens published a message to the community called "State of Open Source Message: A New Decade For Open Source". Around the same time the ezine RegDeveloper published an interview with Perens where he spoke of

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2624-525: The Copyright Commission of South Korea. Perens web site presently advertises his availability to keynote conferences as long as travel and lodging expenses are compensated. In 2020, Perens delivered the talk, "What Comes After Open Source?" for DebConf 2020. He discussed the future of open source licensing and the need to develop alternative licensing structures so that open source developers could get paid for their work. Perens poses "Open Source" as

2706-743: The Debian Free Software Guidelines into the Open Source Definition by removing Debian references and replacing them with "Open Source". The original announcement of The Open Source Definition was made on February 9, 1998, on Slashdot and elsewhere; the definition was given in Linux Gazette on February 10, 1998. Concurrently, Perens and Raymond established the Open Source Initiative , an organization intended to promote open source software. Perens left OSI in 1999,

2788-630: The Public Interest . Within Europe some notable organizations are Free Software Foundation Europe , open-source projects EU (OSP) and OpenForum Europe (OFE). One Australian organization is Linux Australia while Asia has Open source Asia and FOSSAsia . Free and open source software for Africa (FOSSFA) and OpenAfrica are African organizations and Central and South Asia has such organizations as FLISOL and GRUP de usuarios de software libre Peru . Outside of these, many more organizations dedicated to

2870-513: The United States has focused on national security in regard to open-source software implementation due to the perceived threat of the increase of open-source software activity in countries like China and Russia, with the Department of Defense considering multiple criteria for using OSS. These criteria include: if it comes from and is maintained by trusted sources, whether it will continue to be maintained, if there are dependencies on sub-components in

2952-473: The advancement of open-source software exist. FOSS products are generally licensed under two types of licenses: permissive licensing and copyleft licensing . Both of these types of licenses are different than proprietary licensing in that they can allow more users access to the software and allow for the creation of derivative works as specified by the terms of the specific license, as each license has its own rules. Permissive licenses allow recipients of

3034-402: The bazaar model should exhibit the following patterns: Users should be treated as co-developers: The users are treated like co-developers and so they should have access to the source code of the software. Furthermore, users are encouraged to submit additions to the software, code fixes for the software, bug reports , documentation, etc. Having more co-developers increases the rate at which

3116-466: The code facilitates public trust in the software. Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. A 2024 estimate of the value of open-source software to firms is $ 8.8 trillion, as firms would need to spend 3.5 times the amount they currently do without the use of open source software. Open-source code can be used for studying and allows capable end users to adapt software to their personal needs in

3198-414: The code. The code is then tested and reviewed by peers. Developers can edit and evolve their code through feedback from continuous integration . Once the leadership and community are satisfied with the whole project, it can be partially released and user instruction can be documented. If the project is ready to be released, it is frozen, with only serious bug fixes or security repairs occurring. Finally,

3280-427: The company's IT usage, operating efficiencies, and the productivity of employees. Industries are likely to use OSS due to back-office functionality, sales support, research and development, software features, quick deployment, portability across platforms and avoidance of commercial license management. Additionally, lower cost for hardware and ownership are also important benefits. Organizations that contribute to

3362-472: The convention exhibitions of projects Perens supports, including M17 and FreeDV . Perens operates two companies: Algoram is a start-up which is creating a web-based control system for radio transmitters and other devices. Legal Engineering is a legal-technical consultancy which specializes in resolving copyright infringement in relation to open source software. Perens grew up in Long Island , New York. He

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3444-403: The development and expansions of free and open-source software movements exist all over the world. These organizations are dedicated to goals such as teaching and spreading technology. As listed by a former vice president of the Open Source Initiative , some American organizations include the Free Software Foundation , Software Freedom Conservancy , the Open Source Initiative and Software in

3526-461: The distribution of project information that focuses on end users. The basic roles OSS participants can fall into multiple categories, beginning with leadership at the center of the project who have control over its execution. Next are the core contributors with a great deal of experience and authority in the project who may guide the other contributors. Non-core contributors have less experience and authority, but regularly contribute and are vital to

3608-628: The first formal announcement and manifesto of open source . He co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) with Eric S. Raymond . In 2005, Perens represented Open Source at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society , at the invitation of the United Nations Development Programme . He has appeared before national legislatures and is often quoted in the press, advocating for open source and

3690-439: The first time in 2016, and was noticed for its strong debut and in 2017, produced its first Grand Prize winner. The contest was open to students thirteen years of age or older who were then enrolled in high school (or equivalent pre-university or secondary school program). Prizes offered by Google included a contest T-shirt and a participation certificate for completing at least one task and US$ 100 for every three tasks completed to

3772-601: The focus on patent rights within these licenses, which has seen backlash from the OSS community, who prefer other forms of IP protection. Another issue includes technological protection measures (TPM) and digital rights management (DRM) techniques which were internationally legally recognized and protected in the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Treaty . Open source software proponents disliked these technologies as they constrained end-users potentially beyond copyright law. Europe responded to such complaints by putting TPM under legal controls, representing

3854-634: The following 2000s he spoke about Open source again. Perens presently volunteers as the Open Source Initiative's representative to the European Technical Standards Institute ("ETSI"), and is a frequent participant in review of license texts submitted to OSI for certification as Open Source licenses. In 1999, Perens left Pixar and became the president of Linux Capital Group, a business incubator and venture capital firm focusing on Linux-based businesses. Their major investment

3936-517: The grand prize award winners and they will visit Google's Mountain View, California, USA headquarters for a four-day trip with an awards ceremony, an opportunity to meet with Google engineers, and a day of sightseeing in San Francisco. Open source software This is an accepted version of this page Open-source software ( OSS ) is computer software that is released under a license in which

4018-651: The keynote addresses at the 2012 linux.conf.au conference in Ballarat , Australia. He discussed the need for open source software to market itself better to non-technical users. He also discussed some of the latest developments in open-source hardware, such as Papilio and Bus Pirate. In 2013, Perens spoke in South America, as the closing keynote at Latinoware 2013. He was the keynote of CISL – Conferencia Internacional de Software Libre, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and keynoted

4100-480: The many benefits provided, a huge issue to be considered is cybersecurity . While accidental vulnerabilities are possible, so are attacks by outside agents. Because of these fears, governmental interest in contributing to the governance of software has become more prominent. However, these are the broad strokes of the issue, with each country having their own specific politicized interactions with open-source software and their goals for its implementation. For example,

4182-560: The mid 2000s, more and more tech companies have begun to use OSS. For example, Dell's move of selling computers with GNU/Linux already installed. Microsoft itself has launched a Linux-based operating system despite previous animosity with the OSS movement. Despite these developments, these companies tend to only use OSS for certain purposes, leading to worries that OSS is being taken advantage of by corporations and not given anything in return. While many governments are interested in implementing and promoting open-source software due to

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4264-430: The month while Perens edited, and the completed document was then announced as Debian project policy. Part of the Debian Social Contract was the Debian Free Software Guidelines , a set of 10 guidelines for determining whether a set of software can be described as "free software", and thus whether it could be included in Debian. On February 3, 1998, a group of people (not including Perens) met at VA Linux Systems to discuss

4346-505: The number of people employed in the IT sector. OSS can be highly reliable when it has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software. Open source is not dependent on the company or author that originally created it. Even if the company fails, the code continues to exist and be developed by its users. OSS is flexible because modular systems allow programmers to build custom interfaces, or add new abilities to it and it

4428-435: The perceived benefits or costs, such as improved reputation or value of the project. The motivations of developers can come from many different places and reasons, but the important takeaway is that money is not the only or even most important incentivization . Because economic theory mainly focuses on the consumption of scarce resources, the OSS dynamic can be hard to understand. In OSS, producers become consumers by reaping

4510-404: The potential to quicken innovation and create of social value. In France for instance, a policy that incentivized government to favor free open-source software increased to nearly 600,000 OSS contributions per year, generating social value by increasing the quantity and quality of open-source software. This policy also led to an estimated increase of up to 18% of tech startups and a 14% increase in

4592-574: The project is fully released and only changed through minor bug fixes. Open source implementation of a standard can increase adoption of that standard. This creates developer loyalty as developers feel empowered and have a sense of ownership of the end product. Moreover, lower costs of marketing and logistical services are needed for OSS. OSS can be a tool to promote a company's image, including its commercial products. The OSS development approach has helped produce reliable, high quality software quickly and inexpensively. Open source development offers

4674-759: The project's development. New contributors are the least experienced but with mentorship and guidance can become regular contributors. Some possible ways of contributing to open-source software include such roles as programming , user interface design and testing, web design , bug triage , accessibility design and testing, UX design , code testing, and security review and testing. However, there are several ways of contributing to OSS projects even without coding skills. For example, some less technical ways of participating are documentation writing and editing, translation , project management , event organization and coordination, marketing, release management, community management, and public relations and outreach. Funding

4756-420: The promotion of Free Software to business in pragmatic terms, rather than the moral terms preferred by Richard Stallman . Christine Petersen of the nanotechnology organization Foresight Institute, who was present because Foresight took an early interest in Free Software, suggested the term "Open Source". The next day, Eric S. Raymond recruited Perens to work with him on the formation of Open Source. Perens modified

4838-570: The reform of national and international technology policy. Perens is also an amateur radio operator , with call sign K6BP. He promotes open radio communications standards and open-source hardware . In 2016 Perens, along with Boalt Hall (Berkeley Law) professor Lothar Determann, co-authored "Open Cars" which appeared in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. In 2018 Perens founded the Open Research Institute (ORI),

4920-431: The rewards of contributing to a project. For example, a developer becomes well regarded by their peers for a successful contribution to an OSS project. The social benefits and interactions of OSS are difficult to account for in economic models as well. Furthermore, the innovation of technology creates constantly changing value discussions and outlooks, making economic model unable to predict social behavior. Although OSS

5002-485: The room, and their vote in the International Amateur Radio Union was equivalent to that of the entire United States. In 1997, Perens was carbon-copied on an email conversation between Donnie Barnes of Red Hat and Ean Schuessler, who was then working on Debian. Schuessler bemoaned that Red Hat had never stated its social contract with the developer community. Perens took this as inspiration to create

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5084-490: The same license while weak copyleft licenses require the use of the same license only under certain conditions. Examples of this type of license include the GNU family of licenses , and the MPL and EPL licenses. The similarities between these two categories of licensing include that they provide a broad grant of copyright rights, require that recipients preserve copyright notices, and that

5166-500: The similarity of the Artistic license to other open-source software licenses, the ruling created a precedent that applied widely. Examples of free-software license / open-source licenses include Apache licenses , BSD licenses , GNU General Public Licenses , GNU Lesser General Public License , MIT License , Eclipse Public License and Mozilla Public License . Several gray areas exist within software regulation that have great impact on open-source software, such as if software

5248-485: The software "in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay the author(s) of the software a royalty or fee for engaging in the listed activities." Despite initially accepting it, Richard Stallman of the FSF now flatly opposes the term "Open Source" being applied to what they refer to as "free software". Although he agrees that the two terms describe "almost the same category of software", Stallman considers equating

5330-401: The software evolves. Linus's law states that given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow. This means that if many users view the source code, they will eventually find all bugs and suggest how to fix them. Some users have advanced programming skills, and furthermore, each user's machine provides an additional testing environment. This new testing environment offers the ability to find and fix

5412-484: The software should be modular allowing for parallel development on independent components. Dynamic decision-making structure: There is a need for a decision-making structure, whether formal or informal, that makes strategic decisions depending on changing user requirements and other factors. Compare with extreme programming . The process of Open source development begins with a requirements elicitation where developers consider if they should add new features or if

5494-453: The software to implement the author's copyright rights without having to use the same license for distribution. Examples of this type of license include the BSD , MIT , and Apache licenses . Copyleft licenses are different in that they require recipients to use the same license for at least some parts of the distribution of their works. Strong copyleft licenses require all derivative works to use

5576-568: The software, component security and integrity, and foreign governmental influence. Another issue for governments in regard to open source is their investments in technologies such as operating systems , semiconductors , cloud , and artificial intelligence . These technologies all have implications for global cooperation, again opening up security issues and political consequences. Many countries have to balance technological innovation with technological dependence in these partnerships. For example, after China's open-source dependent company Huawei

5658-425: The software. Commercial pressures make traditional software developers pay more attention to customers' requirements than to security requirements, since such features are somewhat invisible to the customer. In open-source software development, tools are used to support the development of the product and the development process itself. Version control systems such as Centralized Version control system (CVCS) and

5740-697: The successes of open source, but also warned of dangers, including a proliferation of OSI-approved licenses which had not undergone legal scrutiny. He advocated the use of the GPLv3 license, especially noting Linus Torvalds ' refusal to switch away from GPLv2 for the Linux kernel. Bruce Perens supported Bernie Sanders for President and he claims that his experience with the open source movement influenced that decision. On July 13, 2016, following Sanders's endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, Perens endorsed Clinton. In January 2013, Perens advocated for abolishment of

5822-597: The terms incorrect and misleading. Stallman also opposes the professed pragmatism of the Open Source Initiative , as he fears that the free software ideals of freedom and community are threatened by compromising on the FSF's idealistic standards for software freedom. The FSF considers free software to be a subset of open-source software, and Richard Stallman explained that DRM software, for example, can be developed as open source, despite that it does not give its users freedom (it restricts them), and thus does not qualify as free software. In his 1997 essay The Cathedral and

5904-514: The traditional model of development, which he called the cathedral model, development takes place in a centralized way. Roles are clearly defined. Roles include people dedicated to designing (the architects), people responsible for managing the project, and people responsible for implementation. Traditional software engineering follows the cathedral model. The bazaar model, however, is different. In this model, roles are not clearly defined. Some proposed characteristics of software developed using

5986-437: The use and modification of the code. It is an explicit "feature" of open source that it puts very few restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user, in order to enable the rapid evolution of the software. According to Feller et al. (2005), the terms "free software" and "open-source software" should be applied to any "software products distributed under terms that allow users" to use, modify, and redistribute

6068-724: Was a visiting lecturer and researcher for the University of Agder under a three-year grant from the Competence Fund of Southern Norway. During this time he consulted the Norwegian Government and other entities on government policy issues related to computers and software. After this time Perens worked remotely on Agder programs, mainly concerning the European Internet Accessibility Observatory . In 2007, some of Perens's government advisory roles included

6150-452: Was born with cerebral palsy , which caused him to have slurred speech as a child, a condition that led to a misdiagnosis of him as developmentally disabled in school and led the school to fail to teach him to read. He developed an interest in technology at an early age: besides his interest in amateur radio, he ran a pirate radio station in the town of Lido Beach and briefly engaged in phone phreaking . Perens worked for seven years at

6232-454: Was eventually overtaken in popularity by Ubuntu , another Debian-based distribution, which was started in 2004, and UserLinux became unmaintained in 2006. Perens was an employee of SourceLabs, a Seattle -based open source software and services company, from June 2005 until December 2007. He produced a video commercial, Impending Security Breach , for SourceLabs in 2007. (SourceLabs was acquired by EMC in 2009.) Between 1981 and 1986, Perens

6314-501: Was fired as a result of his anti- Microsoft statements, which especially became an issue after HP acquired Compaq , a major manufacturer of Microsoft Windows -based PCs, in 2002. In 2003 Perens created UserLinux , a Debian-based distribution whose stated goal was, "Provide businesses with freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options designed to encourage productivity and security while reducing overall costs." UserLinux

6396-494: Was in Progeny Linux Systems , a company headed by Debian founder Ian Murdock. In 2000, as a result of the economic downturn, Perens shut down Linux Capital Group. (Progeny Linux Systems would end operations in 2007.) From December 2000 to September 2002, Perens served as "Senior Global Strategist for Linux and Open Source" at Hewlett-Packard , internally evangelizing for the use of Linux and other open-source software. He

6478-541: Was keynote speaker at a European Commission conference on Digital Business Ecosystems at the Centre Borschette, Brussels, on November 7 . In 2009, Perens acted as an expert witness on open source in the Jacobsen v. Katzer U.S. Federal lawsuit. His report, which was made publicly available by Jacobsen, presented the culture and impact of open-source software development to the federal courts. Perens delivered one of

6560-404: Was much debate on whether to protect it as intellectual property under patent law , copyright law or establishing a unique regulation. Ultimately, copyright law became the standard with computer programs being considered a form of literary work, with some tweaks of unique regulation. Software is generally considered source code and object code , with both being protectable, though there

6642-488: Was on the staff of the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab as a Unix kernel programmer. In 2002, Perens was a remote Senior Scientist for Open Source with the Cyber Security Policy Laboratory of George Washington University under the direction of Tony Stanco. Stanco was director of the laboratory for a year, while its regular director was on sabbatical. Between 2006 and 2007, Perens

6724-470: Was prevented from using Google's Android system in 2019, they began to create their own alternative operating system: Harmony OS . Germany recently established a Sovereign Tech Fund , to help support the governance and maintenance of the software that they use. Bruce Perens Bruce Perens (born around 1958 ) is an American computer programmer and advocate in the free software movement . He created The Open Source Definition and published

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