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SAN FRANCISCO -- Politics appears to have divided Hewlett-Packard and one of its top Linux engineers.

Bruce Perens, an icon in the open source community and a senior strategist with HP's Linux software group, disclosed Thursday that he plans to leave the company in order to become more politically active, a move that has been ill-received by HP management, he said.

Perens said he is leaving HP to speak out on public policies and laws that threaten to limit the freedoms of the open source community. He plans to become an independent consultant and continue working with HP's open source projects, many of which he has launched during his tenure.

The HP executive took part in a rally here Thursday for a proposal that California's government IT systems use open source software instead of proprietary programs. Corporate ties are getting in the way of his political ideals, Perens says. He advocates the freedom to develop software that challenges corporate interests.

"I'm too political to be someone else's employee," Perens said as he marched through downtown San Francisco alongside a handful of software developers.

Challenging DMCA

Mike Balma, Linux business strategist at HP, wouldn't comment on Perens' employment status or how the company has reacted to his recent venture into political activism.

"Bruce has expressed his goal of becoming more politically active. If he wants to do that, then we certainly support his decision," Balma said. "We've really had a great relationship with Bruce. He's really been an incredible help enhancing our knowledge of the open source community."

Although HP has benefited from his Linux expertise, the company has been pressuring Perens to mute his activist tendencies. In late July, HP forced Perens to cancel a demonstration he had planned that would have put him at risk of violating the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). His boss, Martin Fink, defended the decision, and noted that he "didn't want any of his employees going to jail."

Perens planned to reveal the recipe for a software program that lets a DVD player circumvent some digital rights management technology. Such a demonstration is prohibited under the DMCA, Perens said. His intent was to show how trivial most DRM technologies are.

After Perens leaves HP, he will follow through with that demonstration, he said.

HP has also found itself on the other side of the fence regarding the copyright legislation. Days after HP stopped Perens' DMCA demonstration, it was revealed that a company executive had threatened to invoke the DMCA against a small consulting firm for revealing a bug in HP's Tru64 Unix operating system.

Still Friendly

The political strife between the open source advocate and his employer hasn't hampered Perens' support of HP's Linux efforts. Perens said he hopes to stay on as a consultant. "HP does not want to do without my advice," he said.

Balma confirmed that view. "The skills that Bruce brings and the consulting help he could contribute, we'd love to continue that relationship."

Perens joined HP in December 2000 after winning top status in the open source community for his work in the development of a version of Linux called Debian. He is also the author of "The Open Source Definition," a document that outlines the philosophy of the development model, which says software code should be free to view and modify.

While at HP, he formed an open source review board and wrote HP's corporate open source policy manual. He said he would do well jumpstarting similar efforts for other IT vendors.

"That's something that I think a lot of companies could use," Perens said.

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