Revolution OS

While this documentary only covers the early period of Linux and Open Source history (up to about 2000), it provides great insights into how the software industry got itself where it is today.

Of course, since 2000, Linux has made great strides into the server market, the desktop market (even Walmart sells computers with Linux now), and the embedded market. Cell phones, Palm PDAs, cameras, camcorders, cars, networking, Tivo, cable boxes, etc. all run by Linux now (or soon will, according to announcements from manufacturers).

The days when you needed to learn a dozen different operating systems are gone. Learn Linux and you know how everything works. The best part is that if you don't like the way something works, you can change it. That, and it's free! Make copies for all your friends, legally. Tens of thousands of high-quality free software products (office suites, graphics packages, video processing, everything imaginable). Tech support is provided by tens of thousands of volunteers.

It's hard to understand how this change from paying for software to free software happened; for many people not involved in the process, it's still news to them.

If you want to know how this all happened, Revolution OS will give you the background you need to understand the way the software business works now, and in the future.

If this really is a serious attempt for making a documentary it tries to cover so many areas that it should have been made a series instead. It fails to give a proper history of open source/free software. It fails to recreate the role of open source/free software during the period of focus, namely the dot com boom and crash of 1997-2001. It fails to give any new insights, even for the year it was made. And it fails miserably to have any kind of objectivity or dialogue.

The value of this movie are the interviews with the key persons of the various open source and free software movements, though it becomes quite tiresome to sit and wait for the goodies. What really brings the credibility down is the overly hostile reading of the letter by Bill Gates and the traditional Microsoft bashing through the entire production, combined with the heroic soundtrack during the interviews of the "good guys". It gives the over all impression of really being a sales pitch for a church from a bunch of overly enthusiastic believers, though without the visionary parts that can make it a document of its context of production.

In conclusion, even though far between, there are some good bits in this documentary that could make it worth watching if you have a special interest in the open source movement. Just be aware that you might also get some chills of embarrassment in between.

A nice documentary about the open source software revolution. None of the material presented here will come as a surprise to the computer techies out there, but the interview format of the film does give a feel for the personalities involved, including Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, and Eric Raymond. What is most intriguing is how each person is portrayed as feeling that their contribution to the open source community stands out as the most important part of the revolution: Torvalds' Linux, Stallman's GNU Project, Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", Perens' "Open Source Definition", and Behlendorf's Apache. Whether these people truly feel this way or whether it is attributable to creative editing is an exercise left to the viewer.

I guess I expected Revolution OS to show not only the history of LINUX and OpenSource but also why these softwares are better than their commercial counterparts. I was pleased with the presentation of the history, as I had not been previously aware of it, but I was less than satisfied with the documentary's complete lack of any demonstration, however brief, of the software and an explanation of why it's better than Microsoft Windows. There's a scene where Bill Gate's is responding to the issue of free software. Some of his remarks make sense- but it was difficult to focus on the ideas because at that point there was absolutely atrocious and intrusive music 'pasted' into the background and I couldn't help feeling that I was being manipulated. I also did not get how some of these developers make their money. Someone has to create the software. This takes time. People have to eat and they need to pay for their food to eat. If they are giving their time away developing free software, where are they getting the money for food? I would have liked the documentary to address that issue. I would also like to say that I do use OpenSource software and find it to be quite good, and since it's free, remarkable. I think the OpenSource movement is revolutionary, but I'm not sure this film brings this across.

My fourteen-year-old boy is very much into computers (that's hardly surprising). This summer he'll be back with the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth program studying - I don't really know exactly what. It's some kind of computer program, I just sign the check.

He's very much both anti-Microsoft and anti-Bill Gates. He's also quite pro-Linux, the emblem of the "Open Source" movement whose adherents regard its underlying virtues with a devotion normally reserved by the religious for the icons of their faiths.

So he wanted me to see "Revolution OS," a documentary about the Linux operating system and the open source movement that spawned the increasingly important competitor to both Microsoft and Apple.

This is a very interesting documentary which I, clueless as to the secrets of operating systems, readily understood. I watched it with the barest comprehension of Linux or the philosophy underlying the open source concept.

Much credit to the filmmaker for not only explaining the seminal value of open source - the commitment to free interchange of ideas with minimal incorporation of legal protection for intellectual property - but for also succinctly allowing contrasting values and competing personalities screen time. This documentary is a very concise but excellent guide for the uninitiated into a world usually the arcane preserve of specialists most adept at talking to each other.

The Open Source movement is a work in progress threatened by the real risk of those benefiting from openness legally protecting their own "added value" and thus, in a sense, betraying their benefactors. Several of those interviewed pursue their open source values almost as a creed, the commitment to computers taking the place of more traditional dogma.

Anyone interested in a major intellectual counterpoint to the dominance of both Microsoft and the role of law in insuring proprietary benefits for innovators should see "Revolution OS": no manual required.

8/10.