Revolution OS

Revolution OS is a 2001 documentary film which traces the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, open source, and the free software movement.

Directed by J. T. S. Moore, the film features interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf.

Synopsis

The film begins with glimpses of Raymond, a Linux IPO, Torvalds, the idea of Open Source, Perens, Stallman, then sets the historical stage in the early days of hackers and computer hobbyists when code was shared freely. It discusses how change came in 1978 as Bill Gates, in his Open Letter to Hobbyists, pointedly prodded hobbyists to pay up. Stallman relates his struggles with closed-source vendors at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, leading to his departure to focus on the development of free software, and the GNU project.

Torvalds describes the development of the Linux kernel, the GNU/Linux naming controversy, Linux's further evolution and its commercialization.

Raymond and Stallman clarify the philosophy of free software vs Communism and capitalism, and development stages of Linux.

Michael Tiemann discusses how he met Stallman in 1987, got an early version of Stallman's GCC, and founded Cygnus Solutions.

Larry Augustin describes combining GNU software with a normal PC to create a Unix-like workstation which cost one third the price of a Sun workstation even though it was twice as powerful. He relates his early dealings with venture capitalists, the eventual capitalization and commodification of Linux for his own company, VA Linux, and its IPO.

Brian Behlendorf, one of the original developers of the Apache HTTP Server, explains how he started to exchange patches for the NCSA Web-Server daemon with other developers and how this led to the release of "a patchy" webserver, Apache.

Frank Hecker of Netscape discusses how it came to be that Netscape executives released the source code for Netscape's browser, one of the signal events which made Open Source a force to be reckoned with by business executives, the mainstream media, and the public at large.^[1] This point was only shown to be more true after the film's release as the Netscape source code would eventually become the Firefox browser, reclaiming a large percentage of market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The film also documents the scope of the first full-scale LinuxWorld Summit conference, with appearances by Linus Torvalds and Larry Augustin on the keynote stage.

Much of the footage for the film was shot in Silicon Valley.

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