Bruce Perens engages in political activity around two "enablement"
issues: the enablement of the individual as an innovator and creator of
technology, and the enablement of handicapped people to participate in
our society through electronic communications media that are generally
intended for those without a physical disablement.
Open Standards are important to the physically disabled, because they allow
software that is created to accommodate a specific individual or group to
inter-operate with the mass-market software used by those without a disability.
Open Source is also important to handicapped accommodation because it is
available for modification and redistribution of the modified version without
the intellectual property issues of proprietary software.
One of Perens main areas of political and policy activity is the
Individual as Innovator.
This includes:
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Open Source, Open Hardware, Open Content
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Open Source is uniquely accessible to individuals
and loose remote collaborations, while other forms of software
development are focused on corporations. Open Hardware is the
practice of sharing hardware designs under the rules of Open
Source software licensing. Open Content is writing and media
that are licensed as Open Source and open to wide collaboration.
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The Freedom to Tinker
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The ability of individuals to: perform scientific research and experiments
for innovation and for their own education, to have access to scientific
materials, and to be able to modify consumer equipment as part of their
research - for example to replace its software with software bearing other
features (often Open Source).
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Learning Without Teachers
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Systems for education for those to whom teachers are not available,
practical, or even desirable. In general, Perens believes that
discovery-based learning
is superior to pedantic systems in delivering students that are capable
of creativity and who can conceive of and produce new products. Some of
his recent work has been to create economical means of building college
laboratories for wireless communications, where previously the school
had no lab for that program. Perens' prototype lab uses GNU Radio and the
Universal Software Radio Peripheral to produce an economical wireless
communications laboratory (from $2000 to $1000) where previously a
laboratory with $500,000 worth of test equipment from Agilent or a
similar vendor would have been necessary.
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Amateur Radio for Education
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Amateur Radio is one of the few ways that a student can gain hands-on
knowledge engineering real wireless communications systems, including
space communications.
It's the only system capable of worldwide communications without
a commercial or government-owned infrastructure. Such infrastructures
are always blocked from student tinkering for the protection of the
network. Using Amateur Radio, a student can become a global network
operator with significant responsibility.
The Amateur satellite program, AMSAT, has launched
about 60 satellites since 1963 as "hitch hikers" on commercial
or government payloads, and is the only significant
operator of space technology outside of government and large corporations.