Educational Media Reviews Online

Revolution OS, a feature-length documentary about the free software movement and the development of open source programming, weaves a compelling if uneven story about programmers and hackers and their stormy relationship with corporate software manufacturers, especially Microsoft. Mostly a compilation of interviews with key players in the open source movement, this film represents a clash of philosophies that is heralded as potentially earthshaking, but in reality has had few significant results.

The video opens with a hysterically dramatic reading of the “Open Letter to Hobbyists” Bill Gates wrote in 1976, wherein he argues fervently for an end to software piracy, especially of his own products. This letter began a debate among programmers that has lasted for nearly three decades now, whether software should be copyprotected or freely distributed.

Beginning in 1984 Richard Stallman delivered the opening salvo against Microsoft by developing the GNU public license and the concept of “copyleft,” the philosophical cornerstone of the free software movement. While Stallman worked on crafting GNU, a freely distributable operating system based on a decentralized model, another programmer was about to cut in front of him with a monumental development. In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a twenty-one year old student in Finland, created the Linux kernel, a program that formed the basis for a more unified OS that could be a legitimate competitor for Microsoft Windows.

Stallman comes across as a 60’s radical, with his long hair and beard, railing against an uncaring corporate system and the unimaginative, overpriced software it creates. By contrast, Torvalds’ image is that of a savior, with a cool intelligence and a strange disinterest in all that has come of his work on creating Linux.

Also interviewed is Eric Raymond, the author of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” considered by many as the manifesto of open source, which tries to take the underpinnings of free software and make them more palatable to corporate software manufacturers. One direct consequence of his writings was the transformation of Netscape into an open source product. Dozens of other programmers and computing folks are interviewed as well.

The video comes across more stridently than it really should, considering the tempest in a teapot that open source has come to be. Some images in the movie, such as the sudden downturn of Linux-based stocks in 2000 and the closure of some open source companies, help paint a less biased picture, but overall the message is strongly biased in favor of open source. Revolution OS is well organized, chock full of details, and, for the younger hacker, probably very worthwhile as a history of open source. But it relies too heavily on one-sided interviews to be of much interest to anyone who is not already somewhat sympathetic to the cause.

Recommended for public libraries and general academic libraries supporting a computer science program.