Perens is a vice president at Sourcelabs. He is a member of the board of directors of Open Source Risk Management Inc. and a major stockholder of Progeny Linux Inc. He is an elected director of Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
Perens is series editor of the Bruce Perens' Open Source Series line of books with Prentice Hall PTR publishers, with 20 titles published so far. The books sell well in retail stores, even though their texts are released under an Open Source license. Perens is Senior Research Scientist for Open Source with George Washington University's Cyber Security Policy Research Institute. Perens previously spent two years with HP as Senior Global Strategist for Linux and Open Source, and was president of Linux Capital Group, a venture fund that specialized in Linux.
Perens spent 20 years in the computer graphic animation industry, 12 of them at Pixar Animation Studios. He has a credit on the films A Bug's Life and Toy Story II.