Perens joins start-up SourceLabs

Open-source start-up SourceLabs has hired software luminary Bruce Perens as vice president of developer relations and policy.

Bruce Perens

Perens has long worked in open-source software as an advocate, developer and consultant to industry organizations and corporations. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative, the group that defines open-source licenses. Perens has been active in the open-source community for some time, having released his free software product, Electric Fence, in 1987.

At SourceLabs, Perens will act as an open-source advocate, manage the company's developer-relations program, and work in research and development.

"SourceLabs is playing a pivotal role in creating the next-generation software industry," Perens said in a statement Wednesday.

Seattle-based SourceLabs, founded last year by former Microsoft and BEA Systems employees, is one of handful of companies providing services for large corporations that use open-source software.

The company does testing to ensure that different combinations of open-source server software can handle rigorous workloads and provides ongoing support services. SourceLabs began its subscription service around the so-called "AMP stack" of the Apache Web server, MySQL database and PHP development language.

"Open-source developers and the corporate IT community have tremendous potential to work together," SourceLabs CEO Byron Sebastian said in a statement. "Bruce's experience forging communities of common interest will be invaluable as these two groups collaborate more."