June 10th, 2005
Sourcelabs acquires Brand Perens
The founder of OSI, the Open Source Luminary (he even has his own Wikipedia page) is now Vice President of Developer Relations and Policy for SourceLabs in Seattle.
Here is how he explained the job to me via e-mail:
Sourcelabs’ job is to be the bridge between Open Source and the enterprise, by providing extensive testing for such things as scalability, and by being the one throat to choke for the support customer.
My job in that context is to get the Open Source developers to put in the features that the enterprise needs. I am going to do that using a great incentive: I’ll pay them! So, if you’re a core developer of something important, and you’re able to take on some paid work, you might hear from me. And the result will be Open Source.
Another important job for me is to help Sourcelabs customers understand Open Source. As an independent consultant, I’ve been helping big companies understand Open Source for the last two years. Among my customers have been Docomo, Motorola, Palmsource, Checkfree, Borland, HP, IBM. I’m continuing what I do for any of my customers who are interested, but now I can also bring all of the expertise in Sourcelabs with me.
Perens is staying in Berkeley, by the way, while Sourcelabs remains based in Seattle.
There’s another important point to make, however. Sourcelabs is 100% behind the "political" aspect of Perens’ life, his work against software patents and the DRM shut-out of Open Source from content players. You might say they like him, they really like him.
In other words, Sourcelabs supports Perens’ personal brand and Perens’ personal brand supports Sourcelabs. It’s a perfect fit.
I have just one tiny suggestion. Sourcelabs is such a bland name. If they really want to hitch their wagon to Bruce Perens’ star, there’s one more step to take (and I’m serious).
Last time I checked, at around 9 AM Eastern, Perensoft.com is available.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 06/11/05
