Last of the independents
By Sam Williams
December 06, 2000 12:00 AM PT
In a move that in many ways reflects the current chilly tech market, one
of the Linux community's last unsigned marquee players has decided to
take a break from free agency and join an established corporate team.
Bruce Perens, the former Pixar (PIXR) employee-slash-Debian lead
developer who had been trying his hand as a Linux investor in recent
months, said Monday that he was putting aside his venture capital
aspirations and joining the staff of Hewlett-Packard (HWP) as the
company's in-house Linux "guru."
"This is the continuation of the revolution," says Perens, who will adopt
the official title of strategic adviser for Linux and open source initiatives
for the Palo Alto based hardware maker. "HP is offering me a pretty big
challenge. That's why I decided to come here."
According to HP executives, the challenge runs both ways.
Martin Fink, HP's general manager of the newly named Linux Systems
Operation and Perens' new boss, says Perens' job description includes
a number of bullet points, including one that reads, simply, "challenge
HP management."
"I wrote that personally," says Fink, a self-confessed Linux advocate
who works out of the company's Fort Collins, Colo., office.
'Bridge' to community
In addition to Perens playing lead open source evangelist within the
86,000-employee company, Fink said he expects Perens to be a
"bridge" to the Linux community, playing the role of company
ombudsman. Finally, Fink said, he expects to solicit Perens' advice on
open source development issues within the company.
"Bruce is going to a busy guy here," Fink said.
Perens, for one, welcomes the opportunity. After spending the last year
working to build up Linux Capital Group, an investment firm Perens
co-founded with the help of Randy Sprolles, owner of Financial
Research Associates, Perens said the time was right to look for
something different. Given the recent woeful state of the Nasdaq, it was
either find something better to do or spend the next few months waiting
for a market turnaround.
"My wife and I have a new son, Stanley," says Perens. "Me being in the
stock market right now was not the best thing for him."
Despite early optimism, Linux Capital Group's portfolio never grew
beyond two companies: KnownSafe.com, a cryptography and
computer security company, and Progeny Linux Systems, a
networking support company founded by Ian Murdock, the hacker best
known for launching and managing the Debian Linux distribution prior to
Perens' two-year tenure as project leader.
Although Linux Capital Group yielded a positive return on its Progeny
investment -- the company is heading toward its second round of
private financing, Perens says -- the outlook for future open source
investments looks grim, at least for the moment.
"We said, well, if we kept doing this, we'll probably go negative," says
Perens, alluding to the plummeting market values for both Linux and
non-Linux startups. "We decided to make Progeny our last investment
and just sit back and let it grow. That obviously left me with a lot of
spare time on my hands."
Not the first
Enter Martin Fink and the opportunity to play the role of both internal
and external open source evangelist for one of Silicon Valley's largest
and oldest companies. Perens isn't the first to jump at such an offer.
Indeed, the last two years have marked something of a bidding war for
marquee-level Linux talent as companies such as Red Hat (RHAT),
VA Linux (LNUX) and Linuxcare race to build up their own brand
names. Equally dramatic has been the growing number of companies
designating internal employees as external ombudsman to satisfy the
open source development community's higher demand for corporate
accountability.
According to Mike Balma, Hewlett Packard's recent decision to hire
Perens was based on the prior decision to designate GNU/Linux as one
of the company's three strategic operating systems, alongside HPUX, a
proprietary version of Unix, and Windows 2000.
"We see more and more need to make sure we're tightly integrated with
the community," says Balma. "Bruce can guide us both internally and be
a bridge to the open source community."
Again, Perens said it was the challenge of working with a company as
large as HP that proved the most enticing.
"It is interesting to think of myself in a position where I have the ear of
top executives including [HP CEO] Carly [Fiorina]," Perens said. "HP
really is unique, because I don't see any other major company extending
this kind of opportunity."
Nevertheless, when comparing himself to other prominent open source
and free software gurus who have taken a position on major companies'
payrolls or boards of directors, Perens did seem to betray a hint of
remorse over surrendering his lone wolf status.
"If you look out there right now, [GNU Project founder] Richard
Stallman is really the only one who doesn't work for some sort of
company in some way," he said. "I'm glad for that, because I really like
Richard. We need somebody like him out there doing that. It gives a
standard to rise up to." |
