HP has fired Bruce Perens – the leading Open Source evangelist and former Debian project lead – for Microsoft-baiting, he says. “It came after a long, long warning,” Perens told the New York Times. “The thing that I did that was most hazardous for HP is the Microsoft-baiting I tend to do.“
HP Fires ‘Microsoft-baiting’ Perens
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
good, looks like HP is finally cleaning up their employee list and lay off all these opensource people. a company can’t make money without selling quality software. opensource people don’t make money for such a company and HP definately need the Microsoft cooperation.
Don’t feed the troll.
Awww, you are starving yourself to death….
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I don’t think this is strange at all. There is countless times where Bruce does something that goes against company’s policies. Remember how he almost broke the DMCA?
At least he tried to do something about that fascist law. He earned my respect.
C.
we can finally farm our crops now. Using proprietary software, those hippies did us no good anyway, just look at the mess they left us as woodstock.
AFAIK, Perens resigned, but Hp are calling it a ‘termination’. According to the article, it was ‘amicable’.
I think this is a Good Thing. Perens and HP were going in completely opposite directions, and his brand of ‘advocacy’ was probably doing them more harm than good.
Also, I happen to be one of those people who believe in quiet advocacy – Linux is creaping onto the agendas of HP, IBM, DELL and others – all the important industry players and playmakers. There’s bound to be a trickle down effect, to the home user eventually – which is exactly what has happened with Microsoft products during the last 15 years.
When all the shouting has finished, and the people doing it go away, we’ll see what we’re really left with and I suspect it’ll be just as much, going on for more, than when the shouting was in effect.
Finally, isn’t Perens a “Free Software” advocate, as opposed to “OpenSource” as the article claims?
I would have been fired for punching Bill Gates’s lights out. Atleast I would have felt quite satisfied after the episode.
HP didn’t want him to disobey the DMCA while under their wing, so he talked it over with them, and they decided to separate.
I assume that Perens is OpenSource, not Free, as he wrote the first Open Source definition from opensource.org, http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.php
Also, I happen to be one of those people who believe in quiet advocacy – Linux is creaping onto the agendas of HP, IBM, DELL and others – all the important industry players and playmakers. There’s bound to be a trickle down effect, to the home user eventually – which is exactly what has happened with Microsoft products during the last 15 years.
Actually Microsoft trickled up. From the hobbiest to the home / small business market to the corporate desktop to the server market. Linux is basically trying to go in the other direction (with a much stronger focus on the embedded systems market). What Apple is trying to do is a closer analogy. They had mindshare in the home / small business workplace but nowhere else. With OSX and Xserve they now have an excellent small business server; and thus the ability to start moving in as total solution for small business. The hope is to go from there to medium business pick up the features needed for the corporat environment….
Uh, helloe?
What in tarnation are you calling a “small business server”?
Some expensive server that runs PPC Unix, Apache, and PHP?
And why strangle your biz by having to buy all those expensive non-expandable mushrooms from Apple? Money is important these days.
Apple’s server box doesn’t have any apps… hello. And the generic UNIX infrastructure that runs on PPC Unix doesn’t have any nice GUI configuation.
Get real. Apple is a sure fire dumb thing to do for small business. There are no apps compared to Windoze. If Intuit ends up building Quickbooks, well, that’s a start. But without a good accounting package, what’s the point?
All in all, Apple is good for richie artsies and not much else.
I think this is a good move for HP and opensource. People like him are only detrimental to a company, I don’t praise MS but if i was HP i would have fired him to. Also this may remove/lessen a figure from the opensource community that does nothing but turn people off from it. Bashing a company that most people are content with will not make you more popular. It just makes you and those you say you represent look bad. In general bashing anyone is bad, especially if you bash them with physical objects. People need to learn that if you want to make a point do it quietly. Do your thing, do it well and show why you think it is good. If it is better people will see this. If you use a brute force approach you will go no where.
Uh, helloe?
What in tarnation are you calling a “small business server”?
Some expensive server that runs PPC Unix, Apache, and PHP?
And why strangle your biz by having to buy all those expensive non-expandable mushrooms from Apple? Money is important these days.
I’m going to assume you are just ignorant not trolling. The “mushrooms” are iMacs Xservers are different http://www.apple.com/xserve/
Apple’s server box doesn’t have any apps… hello. And the generic UNIX infrastructure that runs on PPC Unix doesn’t have any nice GUI configuation.
Actually no, they have far and away the best GUI configuration tools for Unix servers:
http://www.apple.com/server/. Again you are thinking OSX desktop not OSX server.
Get real. Apple is a sure fire dumb thing to do for small business. There are no apps compared to Windoze. If Intuit ends up building Quickbooks, well, that’s a start.
Intuit doesn’t sell a server version of quickbooks. You do remember the topic?
In any case they will soon have an OSX version http://www.quickbooks.com/products/mac/
But without a good accounting package, what’s the point?
They have several:
Oracle Small Business Suite
MYOB
Aatrix
Foresite
Flexware accounting
Maconomy
All in all, Apple is good for richie artsies and not much else.
Time to eat some crow.
jbolden1517: What Apple is trying to do is a closer analogy. They had mindshare in the home / small business workplace but nowhere else. With OSX and Xserve they now have an excellent small business server; and thus the ability to start moving in as total solution for small business.
But they don’t have *one* thing: price advantage.
1) Small businesses DON’T buy expensive rackmount servers
2) Most small business have a staff of less than 50, using XServe is an overkill.
3) OS X has no networking advantages to Windows NT and Linux for this market.
4) To do the same work, Apple desktops and workstations could be a huge overkill. For example, all secretary needs is Office, some schedule manager, an probably an Office-wide database. Why would she need an iMac or an eMac?
5) Apple’s support in USA may be good, but they are inadequate in Asia (not counting Japan). Support is very vital for a business, and local OEM and international OEMs like IBM, Dell, HP etc. provide better support. Ironically, much of the growth of small businesses happen in Asia.
🙂
(Ahhh, the OSS backslash isn’t as bad as I thought)
PS to Dumbo: Your point absolutely doesn’t make any sense. There are plenty of accounting software available for OS X. Plus Intuit was one the first ISV to support the Mac post-Jobs. (And Intuit doesn’t make the server version of QuickBooks).
C.: At least he tried to do something about that fascist law. He earned my respect.
But he step off company bondaries. Whatever Perens says reflects back on HP. HP has a PR problem with Perens around. Besides, would Sun keep an employee if that employee decided to publicly condemn anti trust laws?
jbolden1517: What Apple is trying to do is a closer analogy. They had mindshare in the home / small business workplace but nowhere else. With OSX and Xserve they now have an excellent small business server; and thus the ability to start moving in as total solution for small business.
But they don’t have *one* thing: price advantage.
1) Small businesses DON’T buy expensive rackmount servers
2) Most small business have a staff of less than 50, using XServe is an overkill.
Then they run a powermac with OSX server. The main point is they have an easy to use server solution. As for rack mounting there is one advantage of rack mounts that IMHO makes them worth a ton for small business, employees won’t touch them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a server screwed up because it looks like a PC so employees unplug it to plug a radio or something.
3) OS X has no networking advantages to Windows NT and Linux for this market.
Over Linux — ease of use
Over Windows NT — cheap license costs
4) To do the same work, Apple desktops and workstations could be a huge overkill. For example, all secretary needs is Office, some schedule manager, an probably an Office-wide database. Why would she need an iMac or an eMac?
Well first off an iMac or an eMac doesn’t cost that much. The main advantage would be higher productivity because she isn’t having as many “windows” problems. Also iMac/eMac are much easier to self administer and many of the apps are easier which gets rid of the need for a desktop support group…. That pays for an extra hundred or two pretty quickly.
5) Apple’s support in USA may be good, but they are inadequate in Asia (not counting Japan). Support is very vital for a business, and local OEM and international OEMs like IBM, Dell, HP etc. provide better support. Ironically, much of the growth of small businesses happen in Asia.
For small business in the US international support may not matter much. As far as companies that need international support no question I wouldn’t choose an Apple solution. Their support for right to left languages (like Arabic) is weak; that would knock them out of the running right there.
I got fired for telling some customers the truth too. Real info. Not PR spin. Not rude to the company. Not anti-product. Not anti-anything. Just plain straight info, without attitude, as the customer requested. The company I worked for decided to eliminate me under the claim that I had done something to lose a customer. Yeah right. I gave the customer honest answers to his questions, great customer service and he thanked me. So did the second guy.
BLAM!
Political Correctness has gone so damned overboard in this country. Being “PC” is often equivalent to being dishonest and cowardly. I like a company that allows its employees to speak up about things. I like companies that don’t wear horse blinders and gags. Too bad there aren’t many like this any more…
Good for Perens. Stick with your honesty, man.
you forgot about fewer viruses to take down the office for a day’s loss of work.
have fun!