Bruce Perens - Biography

Contact Information

Email is best: bruce@perens.com
Phone 510-984-1055

Bruce Perens
1563 Solano Ave.
PMB 349
Berkeley CA 94707
USA

The above address is a mailbox at a UPS store, don't expect to find me there!

Major Highlights

There are now 24 books in the Bruce Perens' Open Source Series with Prentice Hall PTR publishers. All titles are under Open Source licenses.
Primary Author: The Open Source Definition , the formative document of the Open Source movement.
I am the person who first announced "Open Source" to the world, in an article carried on Slashdot and elsewhere.
Founder or co-founder: Linux Standard Base , Open Source Initiative , Software in the Public Interest.
I am featured in the documentary film Revolution OS.
Past executive of Hewlett-Packard. Here's their magazine article about me.
I am credited in the films A Bug's Life and Toy Story II.
Ran my own VC firm. Got burst with the stock bubble of 2000, one of the companies we formed hung around for 7 years but is sadly now gone.
Computer Scientist, with several publications and a government research grant. Currently visiting researcher at Agder University College in Norway, residing there about 7 weeks during the year. Formerly Senior Scientist, Open Source for George Washington University's Cyber Security Policy Research Laboratory.
Major Linux developer since 1994.
Unix kernel programmer since 1981.
Former Debian GNU/Linux Project Leader.
I released my first Free Software program, Electric Fence , in 1987. I've written a lot more since then.
The Busybox software I created is a major component of most commercial embedded Linux offerings, and thus is in many devices in homes, offices, even vehicles and aircraft.
Public Speaker representing Linux and Free Software all over the world.
Quoted in National Media: The New York Times ran a half-page profile of me in 2002. I made the front page of the Wall Street Journal in 1999, and appear in many other publications.
Significant background in software, electronics, wireless networking, media (broadcast, film, print), computer graphics, business, and finance.

Goals Achieved

Let's put the important things first: I'm a husband and a father.
As a spokesperson and one of the leaders of Free Software and Linux, I helped grow the field from a hobbyist's curiosity to a multi-Billion-dollar industry.
I helped get the Debian GNU/Linux system on two flights of the U.S. Space Shuttle, bringing a lot of respect to Linux at a time when few people took it seriously.
I helped win the fight for patent-royalty-free internet standards at W3C, the World Wide Web consortium.
I have been an agent for constructive change during the genesis of corporate cooperation with the Open Source community:
- I publicly criticized IBM's first attempt at an Open Source license. They worked with me to write the next version, and remedied everything that I criticized. The resulting license has been applied to many IBM programs, including Jikes and Postfix.
- I publicly criticized Sun's policies for their first "no charge, but not Open Source" release of StarOffice. They took my advice, changed their licensing to the GPL and LGPL, and created OpenOffice.org . Top management at Sun made it clear, at the debut of the GNOME Foundation, that they'd read and considered my criticism.
- I was a leader in the long and often ugly fight to make Qt, the GUI library under the KDE desktop, Free Software. It's under the GPL license today. This dispute was also part of the inspiration for the GNOME project.
I founded No-Code International to reform antiquated laws that require a test on the Morse Code for Ham Radio operators. That organization gained thousands of members in 50 countries and led to a change in the International Telecommunications Union's treaty and the elimination of the laws requiring Morse Code examinations in every nation that has ham radio operators except Russia.
I contributed to the genesis of film computer graphics during 12 years at Pixar and 6 at its predecessor, the NYIT Computer Graphics Lab.
I created the company concept for Progeny Linux Inc., and for Known Safe, Inc., hired their CEOs, and also wrote the original business plan for Known Safe.
I successfully made the transition from engineer to business person. Today I am an effective bridge between the technical and business worlds, and I use that capability for the Free Software Community and for the companies with which I'm associated.

Employment

Sourcelabs - 2005 to 2007.

Vice president. Advising Fortune 100 corporations on Open Source policy and supervising technical work that my department does for them. 50% of my work time is assigned to being an Open Source leader with all control of my agenda in my own hands.

Perens LLC, 2002 to 2005

Sole proprietor. Customers included IBM, NTT (the Japanese phone company), Philips, NCR, Novell, Borland, and a number of smaller companies. Consulting on strategy, policy, and technical issues related to Linux and Open Source software.

Hewlett-Packard Corporation - 2000 to 2002

Senior strategist, Linux and Open Source. I was the first Open Source evangelist to gain a role in top management of a multi-Billion-dollar corporation. On the org chart there were only three people between me and the CEO - a general manager, a vice president, and a president. Among my assignments was to challenge HP management. It was a great job, but when the HP-Compaq merger replaced the HP Linux management with Compaq folks, I was terminated.

Linux Capital Group - 1999 to 2000

CEO. Founded three companies, Linux Capital Group, Progeny Linux Systems, and Known Safe. Wrote the original company concept for Progeny and hired the CEO. Made the transition from engineer to CEO. I learned a lot about business and finance, from the hot seat. Raised all start-up funding for Linux Capital Group and Known Safe, and collaborated in fund-raising for Progeny.

Pixar Animation Studios - 1987-1999

Senior Systems Programmer. I was there for Toy Story, A Bug's Life, and Toy Story II, but Pixar had two different business plans before then, while it was waiting for its non-compete agreement with LucasFilm to run out: hardware manufacturer of a SIMD parallel image computer, and software manufacturer of PC games and applications for 3D on PCs. Survived Pixar's bankruptcy, two or three re-organizations, at least 4 rounds of layoffs, and eventually, their IPO and success.

Wrote microcode for the bit-slice SIMD parallel CPU in the Pixar Image Computer. Microcode is closer to the hardware than assembly language programming, and involves the operation of individual logic elements within the CPU rather than higher-level instructions like "add".

Wrote a behavioral simulation of a VLSI memory controller gate array for the Pixar II Image Computer, and verified the behavioral simulation against a logic simulation driven by the actual chip design. This was before there were runtime programmable gate arrays, so the first time you were able to test a design in actual hardware was when you got silicon back from the foundry. Any bug would require a very expensive design "turn", including re-fabrication of new silicon. My simulation helped catch a lot of VLSI design errors, and the first silicon for this VLSI worked. There was no need to do a second design "turn".

Chief software engineer for the Pixar II project. Wrote all new driver software for the product and all of its hardware diagnostics in host based C and image computer based microcode. I turned on this new computer design for the first time, and my software was able to display an image immediately.

Chief Software Engineer for a SCSI target adapter for the image computer. Wrote all embedded systems code, device drivers, and diagnostics.

Systems Software Architect and later Project Leader for the Iceman Image Processing System, a 5 year project. Created a computer language that was used for image processing, wrote the systems software below it but not the graphics code. This software was used to re-touch the movie Snow White, was used for "rig removal" effects in Terminator II, and has been used on dozens of other feature films.

Author of a successful $2.4 Million ARPA grant proposal for research on computer graphics using the "Iceman" system that I'd helped design. Did a number of progress reports and presentations in Washington during the grant's tenure.

Co-author of the proof-of-concept prototype for Pixar's "Typestry" consumer software, a 3-D typographical rendering product. The prototype worked successfully and led to development of a full product.

Did systems programming support for Pixar's animation department. Solved speed bottlenecks, made the animation software use 20% less memory, fixed bugs, etc.

Ported Pixar's animation system to Open GL, after which it was used to make A Bug's Life, Toy Story II, and other feature films.

Matrix Instruments - 1986

Project manager for medical computer graphic laser film recorder development. Responsible for a division in Orangeburg NY and for an acquired company in Torrance CA. Supervised all software development for the product, including outside contractors.

NYIT Computer Graphics Laboratory - 1981-1986, with some consulting in 1987

Senior systems programmer. This laboratory was the predecessor of Pixar. Much of the pioneering work to make character-animated feature film production possible was done here. I started out as a minicomputer disk operator (back then, you needed an operator to change removable disks), and worked my way up to operating systems programmer in less than a year. Notable projects were:

Unix device drivers and kernel internals. Since Linux is a clone of Unix, this experience carries over directly.
Real-time drivers and application software for single-frame video recording system, critical for animation. This was a time when video recorders did not come with a single-frame feature, we had to modify the hardware, etc. The only documentation we had for writing software was the hardware schematics.
Interactive Graphical Software - for example, a program that demonstrated the American Sign Language.
System administration utilities.
Supervised the computer operators.

Boards of Directors, Stock Participation

Open Source Risk Management, Inc.: Former director.
Progeny Linux Systems, Inc.: Former chairman of the board.
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.: Co-founder and former director, 501(c)3 non-profit.

Notable Volunteer Work

Former Project Leader of the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution, previously held other offices.

Helped build the team from 60 volunteers to about 200, it now stands at 1000 volunteers.

Wrote the installation system and much of the "base system", the part that needs to be installed before the user can boot the system to install the packages that he selects.

Primary author of the Debian Social Contract with the Free Software community and the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which later became the Open Source Definition.

Co-Founder, with Eric Raymond, of the Open Source Initiative, for which I announced "Open Source" and helped promote it.

Founder of the Linux Standard Base, the standardization project of Linux.

Founder of No-Code International. This organization worked to eliminate the Morse Code examination which was required before a ham radio operator anywhere in the world could be licensed to communicate using frequencies below 30 MHz. Built the organization to thousands of members in 50 countries. Helped to convince the International Telecommunications Union to change a treaty. Helped to convince the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the radio administrations of all nations except Russia to eliminate code requirements.

Notable Free Software

Busybox,: an embedded systems tool kit that, with the addition of the Linux kernel, makes a complete, powerful embedded Linux system that fits on a single floppy. I wrote it to make a single-floppy system for the Debian installation and rescue disk, today it is included in many consumer products.
Electric Fence: A debugger for malloc() buffer over-runs, a problem that can be excruciatingly difficult to find without software of this kind. Electric Fence stops a program at the offending source-code line, making a few minutes work of what could otherwise take weeks. Hundreds of people have written to thank me for this program, some even claiming that I've saved their job, etc.
Debian GNU/Linux: Architecture and utilities all over the system, and many key policy decisions for the Debian organization.

Hobbies

Skiing, hiking, bicycling, ham radio, white-water rafting (former guide).