Revolution OS (2001)

*Note, there may be spoilers but it's documented history. It's like spoiling The Civil War by Ken Burns.Fast forward thirteen years to 2014, it's easy to reflect back on this film and see it was a product of its time. This documentary is an interesting look into the world of the Open Source movement and the people behind it but nothing more.Revolution OS spends most of its time speaking on the open source community and chiding proprietary software giant, Microsoft. A popular narrative in 2004. It's very much an idealist view on the computing world built on Richard Stallman's rhetoric. A brilliant man who was unable to adapt to changing times, a relic of the hippie generation.Apple had yet to make a comeback with its Switch campaign, the iMac and iPod - during this time it was primarily Linux vs. Microsoft for people such as myself. I couldn't build software from scratch but I was able to fix problems. For me? There was no doubt Microsoft was the winner in this area and as much as I enjoy this movie, it fails in addressing the open source community problems.Have they produced some great software? Apache is mentioned and it's great for running a server, even on Windows. But what they fail to speak of is the hardware manufacturer's lack of support for Linux in the early 2000's. I can't build software, I certainly can't build hardware. So you'd find 20 page hacks just to get your sound to work. Now if you're in the business of wanting to provide software support for people, which is a big part of this community, that's great. Someone will pay you to fix the problem and you're the geek to do it but why not just make it work to begin with? Paid support is an unfeasible business model for the average user - it's flipping expensive.They make a big point of paid support in the open source community which it has but so does Windows. There's thousands of companies in direct contact with Microsoft to help alleviate any problems your company may encounter.Tinkering with the various operating systems was and is fun but at some point you either continue that progress of "hacking" the software or you get tired and want it to work. With the exception of Windows ME, Microsoft had a fairly good track record of a stable operating system filled with support from hardware manufacturers. With proprietary software, you DO have choices. If Voodoo begins to fail at its job in providing a decent video card, you switch to Nvidia and then ATI... there's also a plethora of software choices from free, open source to paid. Support can be free, sometimes it's not. We are really in a different era by now.The film also delves a bit into the Mozilla project and the problem it had with Internet Explorer. Today? After years of development and hundreds and thousands of changes the browser of choice for geeks, FireFox, began to lose out to Google Chrome. Why? It was faster. FireFox had become set in a quagmire of relying on plug-ins and they forgot to shore up the primary software itself. It had a huge ram issue when Chrome was released. A sleek and faster browser.In today's world, you have APIs and SDKs that allow you certain licensing rights that allow you to tap into the system you're building software for. The Linux vs. Microsoft is almost a dead narrative by now. The majority of people have moved on from the desktop to the tablets and mobile phones. They really don't care about proprietary vs. open source - the average user does not care. Period. They want it to be easy and work. It's hard to imagine the desktop dying off for web developers like myself - what could possibly take its place in the heavy computing and production world?It's not a tablet or cell phone but it's something and it'll probably spawn its own documentary when it arrives.

The film itself was well structured and held my interest quite well. BUT...The majority of the film was trying to demonize Microsoft and Windows users while making heroes out of the Linux community. Honestly it was kind of sad. I use and maintain both operating systems and if they would have presented both sides it would have been much more enthralling, to me anyway.It's an interesting watch just expect it to be completely biased with dated information. they aren't trying to tell the truth, they are trying to tell "their truth".

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.

I had been hearing about Revolution OS from some programmers at my company for the past several months. I'm a management-type so I didn't think the film would really be my type of thing. I then heard a CNET radio segment on the film and decided it might be kind of interesting after all.As it ended up, I caught the last show at the Towne 3 in San Jose. I was tired by the time I sat down in my seat, but I was surprised that I actually stayed awake through the whole film. The director really succeed in making the film a lot more entertaining and involving than I would have thought possible. There were lots of talking heads, but I not as much as I was expecting. The best thing about the film was that it had a sense of humor about the whole thing.If you don't know anything about Linux or Open Source, but are interested in the topics, then you will really like Revolution OS. If you are looking for an intelligent documentary about something pretty important, then you will definitely like Revolution OS. If you are looking for some sort of super-technical film about how to write software or how and why obscure software patches were created, then this film is not for you.Basically, the director, J.T.S. Moore, approached the film like he was telling the story of a revolution with its own heroes, villains, defeats and sly comebacks. That's why I liked it because it was about people and some universal ideas.One final note, I don't see a lot a documentaries in the theater, but Revolution OS seemed really well made. The print I saw was scratched up from a lot of screenings, but the cinematography, editing, shot design, and music were totally top notch. A lot better than the stuff on TLC or The History Channel. I think the whole film was shot on 35mm and in cinemascope. Very neat. I will definitely get the DVD when it comes out.