Success Quote by Bruce Perens

Open source doesn’t march; it lurches, then survives. Bruce Perens’s line is a deliberately abrasive correction to the polished origin myths that corporate tech loves to sell: roadmaps, vision decks, “community strategy.” By calling the marketing paradigm a “massively-parallel drunkard’s walk,” he frames open source adoption as chaotic exploration across countless actors who are not coordinating, not optimizing, and often not even aiming for the same target. Developers scratch itches, companies hedge bets, hobbyists fork for fun, academics publish, and users file bugs that nudge projects sideways. Progress happens, but it’s emergent, not managerial.

The “filtered by a Darwinistic process” clause is the cold punchline. It’s not that every experiment matters; most die. Projects wither from maintainer burnout, governance drama, licensing missteps, or simply failing to attract a critical mass. What remains isn’t “the best” in any moral sense, but what fits the environment: the tool that integrates easily, the license that reduces friction, the community that ships, the project that attracts corporate patrons without collapsing under their weight.

Perens, as a key architect and evangelist of the Open Source Definition, is also policing rhetoric. He’s warning executives and evangelists: you can’t fully “market” open source the way you market a product, because the engine is variation plus selection, not message discipline. The subtext is both skeptical and oddly hopeful: stop pretending you control the story, and you might actually build something that lasts.