Editing Bruce Perens (section)

===Open Source Definition and The Open Source Initiative===
On February 3, 1998, a group of people (not including Perens) met at VA Linux Systems to discuss the promotion of Free Software to business in pragmatic terms, rather than the moral terms preferred by [[Richard Stallman]]. Christine Petersen of the nanotechnology organization Foresight Institute, who was present because Foresight took an early interest in Free Software, suggested the term "Open Source". The next day, Eric S. Raymond recruited Perens to work with him on the formation of Open Source. Perens modified the Debian Free Software Guidelines into the Open Source Definition by removing Debian references and replacing them with "Open Source".

The original announcement of [[The Open Source Definition]] was made on February 9, 1998, on [[Slashdot]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/02/09/213900 |title=Free Software's New Name |publisher=Slashdot |date=February 9, 1998 |access-date=July 15, 2009}}</ref> and elsewhere; the definition was given in [[Linux Gazette]] on February 10, 1998.<ref name="LG"/>

Concurrently, Perens and Raymond established the [[Open Source Initiative]], an organization intended to promote open source software.

Perens left OSI in 1999, a year after co-founding it. In February 1999 in an email to the Debian developers mailing list he explained his decision and stated that, though "most hackers know that Free Software and Open Source are just two words for the same thing", the success of "open source" as a marketing term had "de-emphasized the importance of the freedoms involved in Free Software"; he added, "It's time for us to fix that." He stated his regret that OSI co-founder Eric Raymond "seems to be losing his free software focus."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/debian-devel-199902/msg01641.html|author=Bruce Perens |title=It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again |publisher=Lists.debian.org |date=February 17, 1999|access-date=July 15, 2009}}</ref> But in the following 2000s he spoke about Open source again.<ref name="meet the perens"/><ref name="10yearsoss"/> Perens presently volunteers as the Open Source Initiative's representative to the European Technical Standards Institute ("ETSI"), and is a frequent participant in review of license texts submitted to OSI for certification as Open Source licenses.