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1	1	= Bruce Perens =
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	3	+I am running for one of the Individual seats.
	4	+
3	3	== Who I Am ==
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5	5	I was one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative and an initial board member, and was the creator of the //Open Source Definition, //the rules for Open Source licensing which OSI still uses. I published my first Open Source program,// //the //Electric Fence //malloc debugger, to the USENET newsgroup comp.sources.sun from Pixar in the late 1980's. So, I've been participating in Open Source for about 30 years now - half my life.
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21	21	I've been very effective without holding any representative position. I'm going to go on doing this stuff whether you elect me or not. But I can do more, and more effectively, on some serious issues if you help me by making me an OSI director again. Let's break my agenda into two pieces:
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23		-~1. **We're Not Reaching the Common People** - People worldwide run //your //software, but are unaware of its effect on their lives. We need to reach them, so that they understand that there's another path besides having devices that control the user rather than are controlled by them, and are tools for selling their attention and information about them. Can we meaningfully improve the life of the common person, by helping them to understand what's at stake? Personal devices and the Internet should be tools to enable humanity and increase our freedom, rather than being used to misinform, surveil, and subjugate us. Open Source is the only way to make that happen. But to do the work, we must transition from making tools mainly for ourselves to understanding how to engage the common person as well as, for example, Apple does. That's really difficult for our developers, but have opportunities to teach them how to do it.
	25	+~1. **We're Not Reaching the Common People** - People worldwide run //your //software, but are unaware of its effect on their lives. We need to reach them, so that they understand that there's another path besides having devices that control the user rather than are controlled by them, and are tools for selling their attention and information about them. Can we meaningfully improve the life of the common person, by helping them to understand what's at stake? Personal devices and the Internet should be tools to enable humanity and increase our freedom, rather than being used to misinform, surveil, and subjugate us. Open Source is the only way to make that happen. But to do the work, we must transition from making tools mainly for ourselves to understanding how to engage the common person as well as, for example, Apple does. That's really difficult for our developers, but we have opportunities to teach them how to do it.
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25	25	2.// **The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance**// - There are some //serious //problems facing the Open Source community, and there always are, every year. Who is pushing back for you?// Maybe not who you think. //We are faced with powerful companies and their industry associations that profess to represent Open Source while they work against our interest, like loggers who claim to speak for the trees. They try to establish royalty-bearing patents in "Open" standards that would prevent the implementation of Open Source that complied with the standard, or its commercial use. They are fighting to make our licenses unenforceable - one country's copyright commission even sponsored a presentation on making Open Source licenses "guidelines" rather than legal requirements**. **Well-known companies flaunt decade-long infringements of licenses that //don't even ask for much,// potentially establishing a precedent for courts to further dishonor our licenses.** **One company and their lawyer sued me for defamation for even //daring //to blog that they //might //be violating an Open Source license, running up a fortune in legal defense fees. I'm sticking with the case, to protect the Free Speech Rights of Open Source developers, and I'm blessed with the help of lawyers who stick with me so that I'll keep up the good fight. I'll make the plaintiff pay, eventually. But against all of these forces, we have our small, poorly funded organizations that truly have the community's goals at heart, and people like me who try to fund their activities out of their own pockets. We need all of the help you can get.
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29	29	A lot of Open Source is developed by people on their own time, and even the ones who get paid spend a lot of their personal energy, credibility, and their career direction on Open Source. We need to keep it fun for them, or they won't work. They need to be helped in whatever way they can be, their work needs to be made easier wherever we can, and they need to be //appreciated //for their work. We need companies to treat them well, not exploit them. So, I spend some time on stage giving them reasons to feel good about their work (do you know just how much Open Source is on the //Falcon 9?// Lots!), even telling jokes.
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31		-== Engaging The Other Candidates ==
	33	+== Engaging The Other Individual Candidates ==
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	35	+I'm running for an individual seat. The candidates are all great people and I wish we had room for them all on the board. So, this isn't about running //against //them.
	36	+
	37	+Duane O'Brien thinks that [[Corporate Sponsors should be Corporate Donors>>doc:OBrien2018||rel="__blank" title="Duane O'Brien Candidacy Page"]], and puts up a good rationale. I agree.
	38	+
	39	+I'll read the other candidates pages and put notes here.
	40	+
33	33	== Relationship of Open Source and Free Software ==
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35	35	Open Source is standing on the shoulders of Richard Stallman and the //Free Software// movement which he created. Richard deserves our honor. My intent in founding OSI was to promote the idea of Free Software to business people in a way that they would understand, in the hope that many of them would eventually develop sympathy to Richard's presentation. And many have! Open Source licenses and Free Software licenses don't have any fundamental differences. We're working for the same thing. Those who try to split our camps in two don't understand what we're about.\\