Bruce Perens is the primary author of the Open Source Definition, which is now case law, with a US court enforcing that software should not be called Open Source if it doesn't meet the definition.

His first Free Software program was Electric Fence, the first practical malloc() debugger, published 35 years ago and still in use today.

Bruce wrote Busybox as a small embedded user-mode command set. Today it's in your phone, your wireless router, and millions of devices.

Bruce was the second Debian project leader, and created the modern Linux system in his early work on Debian. He was the first to distribute the development of the core Debian system packages to many disparate and physically separated
developers.

Bruce operates an intellectual property consultancy that helps companies that have violated Open Source licenses to come into compliance. He is also CEO of Algoram, which is developing Algoram Control, an innovative new product.