Revolution OS

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Revolution OS
Promotional poster for two disc edition of Revolution OS
Directed by	J.T.S. Moore
Produced by	J.T.S. Moore
Written by	J.T.S. Moore
Starring	Richard Stallman Linus Torvalds Eric S. Raymond Bruce Perens
Music by	Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli
Editing by	J.T.S. Moore
Release date(s)	2001
Running time	85 min
Country	United States
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Revolution OS is a 2001 documentary which traces the history of GNU, Linux, and the open source and free software movements. It features several interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs (and hackers-cum-entrepreneurs), including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf. It was directed by J.T.S. Moore.

The film begins in medias res with an IPO, and then sets the historical stage by showing the beginnings of software development back in the day when software was shared on paper tape for the price of the paper itself. It then segues to Bill Gates's Open Letter to Hobbyists in which he asks Computer Hobbyists to not share, but to buy software. (This letter was written by Gates when Microsoft was still based in Arizona and spelled "Micro-Soft".) Richard Stallman then explains how and why he left the MIT Lab for Artificial Intelligence in order to devote his life to the development of free software, as well as how he started with the GNU project.

Linus Torvalds is interviewed on his development of the Linux kernel as well as on the GNU/Linux naming controversy and Linux's further evolution, including its commercialization.

Richard Stallman remarks on some of the ideological aspects of open source vis-á-vis Communism and capitalism and well as on several aspects of the development of GNU/Linux.

Michael Tiemann (interviewed in a desert) tells how he met Stallman and got an early version of Stallman's GCC and founded Cygnus Solutions.

Larry Augustin tells how he combined the resulting GNU software and a normal PC to create a UNIX-like Workstation which cost one third the price of a workstation by Sun Microsystems even though it was three times as powerful. His narrative includes his early dealings with venture capitalists, the eventual capitalization and commodification of Linux for his own company, VA Linux, and ends with its IPO.

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

Frank Hecker of Netscape tells how it came to be [1] 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.

The film also contains footage from the massive show floor at the first large LinuxWorld Summit, with appearances by Linus Torvalds and Larry Augustin on the keynote stage.

Inasmuch as much of the footage for the movie was shot in Silicon Valley, viewers might be left with the impression that Linux has been primarily developed there. Even so, Revolution OS documents the most important events in the history of Linux, notably its entry into the mainstream.

The film appeared in several film festivals including South by Southwest, the Atlanta Film and Video Festival, Boston Film Festival, and Denver International Film Festival; it won Best Documentary at both the Savannah Film and Video Festival and the Kudzu Film Festival.

The second DVD of the two-disc special edition from ThinkGeek, contains uncut versions of the interviews.

A write-in campaign to copyright holders of Revolution OS, Wonderview Productions, is underway to get them to donate the uncut interviews to Archive.org.