Perens shut out of OSI license committee

Bruce Perens, a luminary in the open-source software field, has been rejected in his attempt to join a new committee at the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a decision which has made Perens "question the process."

In a posting to an open-source license mailing list, Perens on Sunday said that he applied to be a member of the license proliferation committee at the OSI but he was passed over.

In his original and subsequent posts, Perens voiced his discontent with the selection process, saying that it was not fair.

"Most of you will realize that I am uniquely qualified as the main author of the guidelines that OSI now seeks to interpret, and someone who has assisted many businesses and legal professionals in working within those guidelines since then. Two people with experience similar to mine but less in duration were admitted to the committee. There are a few legal professionals admitted. All others admitted are extremely worthy individuals, and have been working very hard at this, but I can't really say they are more experienced," Perens wrote.

Perens has a great deal of credibility as an advocate in the world of open source: he co-founded the OSI, which defines open-source licenses, and has acted as a developer and consultant. In June, he was hired as vice president of developer relations and policy at open-source start-up SourceLabs.

As the name suggests, the recently formed license proliferation committee at the OSI aims to cut down on the number of approved open-source licenses. Experts content that too many licenses (there are currently over 50) discourages code-sharing between open-source products and is an inhibitor to corporate adoption of open-source.