HP muzzles open source rebel

Open source maverick Bruce Perens has seen his plans to break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) live on stage fizzle out following a muzzling by his employer.

Perens, an influential open source advocate and developer as well as advisory council to Hewlett Packard (HP), had planned to give the finger to the DMCA during a live presentation at the O'Reilly open source developer conference in San Diego last Friday by showing how to hack a DVD player.

But an email from vnunet.com's source at the conference simply read: "It didn't happen. HP kindly asked Bruce not to do it."

HP apparently stepped in at the last minute and prevented Perens from making his potentially criminal protest. Perens's boss at HP said he did not want his employees to go to jail.

Under current US legislation, and based on the recent history of breach-of-copyright cases, Perens could have faced imprisonment or a $500,000 fine for his actions.

But although his presentation at the convention lacked the punch he might have hoped for, Perens still strained at the corporate leash by mouthing off about how the controversial DMCA was the equivalent of a "hall monitor" and a handicap to free and open source software development.

He had little convincing to do, as the DMCA is already near the top of the list of 'bad things in the industry' for most of the developers at the conference, which ended on Friday night.