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27	27	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	+== Want to Talk? ==
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	31	+Your OSI board members should be available. The best way to reach me is via email to bruce at perens dot com. I answer everyone except the obvious racists and misogynists. You can also leave a message at 510-4PERENS and I'll call back. I only take messages, because the fake IRS guys seem to have gotten that number. Please don't use social networks to contact me, I check them much less often than email. I live in Berkeley, a mile or so from Campus.
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29	29	== We Need to Have Fun, Too ==
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31	31	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 lobby and educate in their interest, and spend some time on stage giving them reasons to feel good about their work (like this: do you know just how much Open Source is on the //Falcon 9?// Actually a lot, and there's even Open Hardware!).