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Perens joins start-up SourceLabs

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Bruce Perens

Martin LaMonica CNET News.com

Published: 09 Jun 2005 11:35 BST

Perens has long worked in open source software as an advocate, developer and consultant to industry organisations 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."