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IBM Advertising

Bruce Perens Calls For Open Source, Security, and Data Rights In IBM Ad (youtube.com) 102

Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3872.

Bruce Perens writes: Here's the IBM ad used to open their Think 2019 conference, featuring Buzz Aldrin, Arianna Huffington, Janelle Monae, Miaym Bialik, and astonishingly: me. Interesting of IBM to have an ad including Open Source, security, and data rights as human rights!

Web version with subtitles. Version used to open the Think conference, on Youtube..

"I would like to make open source software the standard..." Perens says in the video, adding "Let's champion data rights as human rights," and asking "How do we bake security into everything we do?" But it's a montage of different speakers who each begin their comments by saying "Dear Tech," offering open letters with their hopes for the entire industry.

"Let's use blockchain to help reduce poverty."

"Let's use IoT to help victims of natural disasters."

"I feel like you have the potential to do so much more."

"Are you working for all of us, or just a few of us?"
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Bruce Perens Calls For Open Source, Security, and Data Rights In IBM Ad

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  • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday February 16, 2019 @05:40PM (#58132208) Homepage Journal
    So, I did this just for fun. It's the first and probably the last time in my life that I would be cast for a commercial. I got the limousine treatement to and from the airport on both sides, a stay in the Fairmont Bungalows in Santa Monica, a few hours costuming, and a 4 AM wake-up and 4:30 AM pick-up to shoot the commercial. I got the full make-up thing and we were finished shooting by 9:30 AM. I am being paid screen actors guild scale, and would get some residuals if they use the spot a lot.
    • Bravo, Bruce!
    • I am being paid screen actors guild scale, and would get some residuals if they use the spot a lot.

      Nice! Naturally, I had to look that up:

      SAG-AFTRA scale on a commercial is $627.75 for an eight-hour day, and use fees are paid according to how the commercial runs. If it plays on the internet, as most spots do these days, the move-over rate is $2,511.00 for one year of use.

      Flo from the Progressive commercials has reportedly negotiated $1,000,000 per year from the huge insurance company.

    • Let's not forget that, in addition to open software, IBM is also championing open hardware [wikipedia.org].

      Which, in a world of hardware with closed-source firmware (Intel's ME and the like) keeps the flame of an open alternative alive.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 16, 2019 @05:50PM (#58132236)

    Sheesh -- the proliferation of unsecured IoT devices *IS* a natural disaster!

    • Yeah, but sensors for fires really do make sense. And although the rivers here in California are reasonably well instrumented, I suppose that can use improvement in a lot of places.
      • I was thinking of something along the lines of a carpet-bomb mesh-network deployment for restoring networking for existing communications devices in disaster areas. I heard that a big problem getting relief to survivors after hurricane Maria was just finding them. Getting in contact with people now isolated in densely forested areas after the existing infrastructure had been destroyed isn't a problem that should have taken weeks to solve. That could have been fixed in a couple hours of flyovers, with "Io

  • Funny to me they mention his slashdot id in a article that involves data privacy on an open-source platform.
  • Support Free Software, not just Open Source. Forget trying to make Free software corporate friendly. Look what happened when the OSI did that, it backfired and now we live in a closed digital ecosystem built on open source fuondations. Bruce was wrong and RMS is right.
    • I hate having to do this, but part of the reason that was possible for them to do was due to the fact the community allowed the dilution of the context of the terms "free" and "open" as they pertained to the Open Source software movement. I think that due to this (and despite the fact that I personally don't like the sound of the word) it is important that we distinguish "free" and "open" in this context with another word like "libre" which has been promoted for disambiguation of the terms "free" and "open

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      It's a shame when you boil down an important issue to a false choice between a silver-spooned, entitled buffoon and a malignant narcissist.

  • by backtick ( 2376 ) on Saturday February 16, 2019 @09:58PM (#58132954) Homepage Journal

    2376 here, yikes, and I did my IBM webmercials back in the Peace Love Linux days. I made the big time!

    I'm gonna toddle off to my internet retirement home now ;)

  • Bruce Perens finds yet another occasion to plug Bruce Perens. Because Bruce Perens starts feeling unhappy when nobody talks about Bruce Perens for more than five minutes.

  • Heh.

    Today I learned that I joined Slashdot before Bruce did. I did business with Bruce and the Open Source Initiative in 2006-2007, back when I was the director of platform technologies for Walmart.com. That was before we launched Walmart Labs (which was the outgrowth of an acquisition and a skunk works project I led at the time, Walmart Global). Bruce's guidance and input were spot on, and helped us steer the giant toward embracing an open source culture and leaving behind Big Blue.

    Happy to see that IBM

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