HP's Linux icon chooses politics over paycheck (InfoWorld) [LWN.net]

InfoWorld reports that Bruce Perens is leaving HP. "While taking part in a San Francisco rally Thursday in support of proposed legislation that would require California's government IT systems to use open source software over proprietary programs, Perens said his corporate ties are getting in the way of his political ideals."

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One worry

Posted Aug 19, 2002 15:37 UTC (Mon) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

It was nice to have such a visible open source advocate inside such a major company. I'm sure it did increase the probability that HP devices would be well supported by open source drivers.

With Bruce gone, that's one less thing stopping HP from going the way a lot of hardware manufacturers go: closing their specs completely. Especially since NVidia gets so much praise for their video cards driven by closed, binary-only drivers, some companies may think that putting out binary Linux drivers is "good enough", when really I (and I am sure many of us) would rather see full open specs on hardware.

Hopefully there is enough support and clue within HP that they won't turn hostile. It's too bad, however, that an open source advocate can't be inside a company like that without feeling stifled as an open source advocate. That fact right there doesn't speak well for us in corporate America.

-Rob