Revolution OS

Though it's been out for more than a year, most people have not gotten a chance to see Revolution OS ; luckily for those who'd like to, a video release is planned for later this year, and for California readers, the screenings page lists four two-night showings over the next several weeks, in Newport Beach, Pasadena, California, Santa Monica, and L.A. Reader AdamBa submits his impressions of the movie (below).

Linux users who wonder why drag-and-drop doesn't always work between applications may find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between Gnome and KDE -- a difference they may not have known existed.

Linux users who watch the documentary Revolution OS will find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between free software and open source software -- a difference they may also have been unaware of.

The film by J.T.S. Moore is about the growth of the free software movement, and its eventual co-option by the open source movement. I don't think that's what the movie was supposed to be about; it was supposed to be about Linux and its battle about Microsoft. But the movie is quickly hijacked by its participants and turned into a theoretical discussion, in which Linux itself is a mere sideshow.

The combatants are Richard Stallman for free software, and Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens for open source. Much of the movie is after-the-fact interviews with them, as well as other notables: Linus Torvalds, Michael Tiemann from Cygnus, Larry Augustin from VA Linux, Brian Behlendorf from Apache. Rob Malda, aka CmdrTaco of Slashdot, even makes an appearance. But the Stallman vs. Raymond/Perens debate forms the core of the movie.

All three main participants come out looking reasonably good. I think when Microsoft executives see photos of typical open source luminaries, they might feel an urge to give them a hug and a bowl of soup, rather than worry about them taking market share from Microsoft (forgetting that Bill Gates created the same impression at age 24, negotiating the deal to license DOS to IBM). But Stallman and Raymond and Perens are not like that; they have spent decades writing software and thinking about writing software, and the intellectual heft of their arguments reflect that. Stallman, in particular, gets a chance to explain at length his feelings about software and how these led to the Free Software Foundation and the GNU public license, which may be news to viewers who only know about Linux.

Heavy with interviews, the movie lacks the staple of documentaries: scenes with multiple people that are later analyzed individually by each of the participants. The main characters almost never appear together, and when they discuss the rare events at which two or more were present, they contradict each other as often as not. This is an artifact of distributed development: there are not a lot of scenes where they are together because they do not need to be together a lot.

The movie also lacks a villain, a battle of good vs. evil. Nominally Microsoft is the bad guy, but except for Bill Gates' quarter-century-old "Open Letter to Hobbyists" and a snide comment from Bruce Perens about intellectual property, it isn't clear why Microsoft is disliked. Nobody explains why Windows is worse, or Linux better. In fact, the movie demonstrates that GNU and Linux began as alternatives to expensive and proprietary hardware and software from Sun, not from Intel and Microsoft.

Even the open source vs. free software debate is presented from both sides. Since more people have heard of open source than free software, the fact that Stallman gets equal time is in a sense a victory for him over Raymond and Perens. But all three are shown acting both profound and petty, combining smugness with "aw, shucks" modesty, and attempting to claim their rightful credit without being obvious about it.

* * *

An outsider might come away from the movie with the inaccurate impression that open source is the commercialized cousin of free software. Digging a little deeper, he or she might find the Free Software Foundation's web page that attempts to clarify the issue. "While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas. The term 'open source' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable." However, after kicking the ideas around a bit, the article doesn't come up with any concrete differences. The site also provides a handy chart, but the "free software" and "open source" boxes intersect completely (except for the small space allocated to their names).

The two movements do have different grounding philosophies. Free software is based on four freedoms, open source is based on nine criteria. The freedoms are more general -- they could be applied to almost any creative work -- but in practice, when it comes to software, the four freedoms generate a set of rules very much like the nine criteria. Linux, the standard-bearer for open source, was released under the GPL, a license that came from free software.

While the Free Software Foundation's site devotes significant verbiage to the difference between free software and open source, the Open Source Initiative doesn't talk about free software. Its history begins (somewhat guilelessly) on February 3, 1998, the day the term "open source" was coined (an event whose location is pointed out by Larry Augustin in the movie).

This gives some insight into the difference between the two movements. The Open Source Initiative has a more pragmatic attitude, and I think this rankles the Free Software Foundation. Of course, OSI has to please various people, while the moral compass of the FSF is inseparable from that of Richard Stallman, making it easier for it to stay the true course. In the movie Eric Raymond describes the term "free software" as "lousy marketing," which if it was intended as an insult, I fear will miss the mark. As Stallman puts it, free software is "important for quality of life and the good of society." What worries the FSF about OSI is not so much the nine criteria that exist and whether they conflict with the four freedoms, but whether the tenth criteria would conflict with the fifth freedom.

In computing, with its thousand ways to do the same thing, such arguments are often termed "religious," and the comparison is not inapt. In his book What is a Jew?, Rabbi Morris Kertzer writes, "[Jewish] tradition pictures God as saying, 'It would even be all right if my children forgot me, as long as they keep my commandments.'" That is an open source attitude: who cares what is motivating you to release the source code; just release it. Free software is different. To do free software right, you gotta believe.

In the movie, neither side is completely frank during its interviews. As part of the GNU project, the FSF created every part of a working Unix system except the kernel, a gap that was filled by the Linux kernel. Linux would not exist without the GNU code (particularly the compiler), lending credence to Stallman's claim that the system should be known as "GNU/Linux," but it is disingenuous of Stallman to portray the kernel as just one part of the whole system, on par with a text editor.

Stallman appears annoyed by a lack of purity in the Linux project. Linus Torvalds had the temerity to start writing software without first working out a detailed philosophy that governed all aspects of his life. Furthermore, he used a simpler approach to kernel writing (a monolithic kernel) than what GNU was planning for its Hurd kernel (a microkernel), and more gallingly, got it working sooner and wound up having the name of his kernel be used to refer to the whole thing, a synecdochic slap in the face to Stallman.

Open source has done such a complete job of embracing and extending free software that we are treated to the sight of Richard Stallman receiving an award named after Linus Torvalds, when historical events seem to dictate the other way around as more appropriate. Stallman, to his credit, shows up to accept the award at LinuxWorld, but he cannot resist haranguing the crowd about the GNU/Linux name (a premise that Torvalds elsewhere labels "ridiculous"). Linus gets the last laugh, however, since during Stallman's rant he is being upstaged by Linus' two adorable toddlers, scooting around on the back of the stage.

* * *

Revolution OS does unearth some good background information on a few aspects of open source. We learn about Cygnus and VA Linux, two of the first companies to attempt a business model based on free software. The movie goes into some detail on Netscape's decision to open-source its browser

But Linux itself is rarely seen, missing from its own movie. The product is merely an adjunct, a manifestation of the battle between open source and free software, with both sides claiming moral ownership. When two dogs fight over a bone, you don't see the bone fight. We are never shown anyone using Linux, except for unhappy users at an Installfest. The rise of Linux is chronicled only in occasional titles, superimposed over footage of cars zooming down a road, showing the impressive rise in the numbers of users through the years. Important issues, such as what a distribution is and why there are different ones, are never addressed.

Tiemann and Augustin discuss how Linux can help customers, but they are too polished to make much of an impression amidst the geekosophical debate. Stallman and Raymond and Perens care more about the abstract fight than the market battles, and their passion drives the movie. If they developed their software to scratch an itch, it's clear they gave the interviews for this movie to scratch a different itch, the nagging feeling that someone else was trying to steal their glory.

This leads one to wonder about the movie's target audience. Open source navel gazers will enjoy matching names to faces, but the average non-technical user will probably fail to grasp the significance of most of the issues discussed. They will be left with an entertaining story, peopled by colorful characters who obviously disagree about something they feel passionate about, but the gist of the arguments will likely elude them. An executive watching the movie may also be puzzled; the term "open source" was chosen over "free software" partly to avoid the non-commercial associations that the old name evoked, but watching the internal bickering may cause some to wonder if the software is ready for prime time, or if it is best reserved for zealots willing to accept certain tradeoffs because of the feeling of moral superiority that the software engenders.

The organization that screened the movie in Seattle, the Northwest Film Forum, has two theaters, one seating 70 and one seating 48. They chose to show it in the little theater (called, in fact, the Little Theater), which seemed to me a mistake in tech-savvy Seattle, at a theater just a few miles from the University of Washington campus. Yet, despite being hyped in the Friday "What's Happening" section of the paper, only 19 people showed up for the show on a Saturday night -- mostly Linux users and their tolerant dates, as far as I could tell.

Others may have to wait a while to see the movie. It has been showing at film festivals since last year, and is now starting limited runs in some cities. Luckily, the film is planned for DVD and video release in the second half of 2002.

The filmed part of the movie ends on a positive note, first with LinuxWorld in 1999 coinciding with the Red Hat IPO (featuring Rob Malda commenting on what the unevenly divided influx of money will mean to the Linux community), and then the VA Linux IPO in December 1999, where the stock rose 698% the first day, a record. Check out the NASDAQ stock ticker crawling by on the CNBC footage from that period! Of course in retrospect we know what is coming, and the movie finishes with a couple of intertitles explaining that VA Linux and Red Hat are now trading below $5 a share.

I think this leaves the average viewer a little puzzled. Did Linux peak in 1999? Now that the money that fluxed in to Linux has fluxed out again, is the community closer to its pure roots, moving away from the open source movement and back towards free software? The movie doesn't say, but you get the feeling that somewhere, Richard Stallman is smiling.

Neutrality is right

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie also lacks a villain, a battle of good vs. evil.

Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?

Discussing matters on the one-dimensional Good vs. Evil axis is plain stupid. The world isn't black and white, good or evil no matter how Ashcroft and other dangerous people would like you to believe it.

My thoughts

[lkaos]

I was fortunate enough to see the movie on Sundance. I really liked the movie although I do not expect non-geeks to enjoy it (in fact, I watched it with a bunch of non-geeks and they absolutely hated it).

I thought Stallman was portrayed in a pretty positive manner (which IMHO is good as he does alot for the community but gets a heck of a lot of criticism for his views). ESR just came off as a total prick, touting his Bazaar essay as "changing the world." Bruce Perens came off as a business man and the whole OSI thing tended to be viewed as a way to commericialize Free Software (which I do believe is true to some extent).

What really suprised me though was how Linus came off in the movie. He almost seemed indifferent and a little aggreviated with Linux. I don't know, he definitely wasn't passionate about it which kind of disappointed me.

My favorite scene that illustrated the difference between Linus and RMS was at a LinuxWorld expo keynote where both were on stage. RMS is rambling off about how important free software is, trying to rally the world, and Linus just kind of was goofing around on the stage with his little daughter, totally oblivious to anything RMS was saying.

Good movie though, I will definitely buy it when it comes out on video.

Dated stuff

[moankey]

I was able to see this thing on Sundance. It was rather dry and dated info. Currently GPL and GNU has taken a different form that what these people had originally intended and become more legalesse than necessary.

The movie was made around the tech boom and days that VALinux was worth the price of a PC per share. Although Stallman was true to form an Open source advocate, you could see others in the film (Bruce Perens, Michael Tiemann, Eric Raymond,...) get that greedy glimmer that Gates always has in their eyes.

It also ends slightly before the bust and if compared to current day their comments seem naive.

Confusion...

[FurryFeet]

This is a great test to notice who does or doesn't read the article.
How many posters actually believe RevolutionOS is a new OS/Linux distribution?

Re:Sigh

[jgerman]

Though not necessarily a GOOD documentary. The dramatic reading of the Gates letter to Hobbyists was a little over the top.

Re:My thoughts

[Pope Slackman]

ESR just came off as a total prick,

Gee, that's surprising...

He almost seemed indifferent and a little aggreviated with Linux. I don't know, he definitely wasn't passionate about it which kind of disappointed me.

This is a man who has to deal with ESR, GNU/RMS and countless other whiny, socially inept dorks [slashdot.org] on pretty much a daily basis, because of linux...
I think that would burn anyone out on project pretty damn quick.

Linus just kind of was goofing around on the stage with his little daughter, totally oblivious to anything RMS was saying.

'Least it sounds like Linus has his priorities straight.

C-X C-S

Re:Never quite understood this

[Damek]

You are very much mistaken. Many artists think about their target audience. This is particularly important in the theater/film world. If you are trying to please or entertain somebody, you'd better have some idea of what will please or entertain them.

Shakespeare especially would have been concerned about his audience. He wrote for the nobles in the balcony just as much as the riff-raff on the ground.

There is nothing wrong with considering those who would use your creation. In fact, if you're creating some sort of technology, this should be of utmost importance, if you intend others to use it. If it's just for you, then no, it shouldn't matter.

Re:The difference between M$ and OS

[Stephen Samuel]

He's not a fool, certainly, and I keep wondering why he has allowed so much rubbish to creep into the windows source code. (Particularly at a kernel level where it can do so much damage.)

IMO, Microsoft (and Bill gates as it's leader) is a Market driven company, not a technology driven company. This is the fundamental difference between Microsoft and Apple, for example. Apple has put a lot of work into the creation of the 'perfect OS', but made a lot of marketing errors in the process -- mostly because it would have diluted the perfection of the OS.
(as an example, opening up the hardware would have created new markets for MAC-OS, but would have made it a bit harder to have the OS remain stable and predictable).

It's been pointed out more than once that, for Microsoft, security and stability are marketing issues -- not technical ones. They didn't take them seriously until they began to be issues that were starting to (threaten to) cost them big contracts.

In short: Bill Gates doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about the OS. He cares about the market. The OS is simply a means to an end.

oh come on

[Apostata]

What a bloated, shamelessly self-interested plug. No one outside of Linux-weenies and unwilling video archivists are going to see this film. Why? Because it's not interesting to anybody but the most devouted "me too" open-source enthusiast.

There must be some confusion (or delusion) about Linux and open-source these days: nobody outside of the "movement" is interested in Stallman (outside of his writing) or Torvalds (outside of his kernel work) or anyone else for that matter.

Why? Because it's bloody software we're talking about here! And although, granted, the philosophy behind the propogation of this software can be interesting, it's clearly not something anyone who isn't part of a LUG is going to be remotely interested in.

When Linux actually gains a reasonable hold of the desktop...when average citizens really take an interest in it (outside of civilian hobbyists), then you can make all the back-patting, iconoclastic documentaries you want.

Man, and I thought Jon Katz was a drip...

Re:Dated stuff

[NDPTAL85]

What some would call greed, others would call practicality.

Re:Not just for geeks,...it's education for everyo

[alcmena]

So I think as a gift to every new client I am giving them a copy of this so they can get informed. This DVD does so much better of a better job explaining this revolution to people.

So we're not boycotting DVDs today? Damn, must have missed that memo.

Re:Sigh

[turbine216]

easy to get along with and eager to help

You're kidding [heise.de], right?

From my experience, and from the experiences of many of my colleagues, Open Source developers are some of the most difficult people on earth. Trying to get help from them is like drawing blood from a stone. It doesn't matter WHAT you ask, it's always "read the fucking manual" or "fuck off, n00b". None of them seem to realize that there is a learning curve that all users must overcome...and their poorly-contructed, text-only, flowchart-lacking HOW-TO's just don't cut it when it comes to supporting a product. I know that free software is free software, but christ...if you don't want to be bothered by the public seeking help, then don't release the fucking software to the public.

Re:Sigh

[turbine216]

you just proved my theory to be 100% correct. You share the very same attitude that i've encountered a number of times when dealing with Open Source - people always saying "hey - it's free! What more do you want??", and then try to tell me that their crapware is so much better than the closed-source for-profit alternative. Screw that! Unreliable support is exactly why open source is making so little headway in ANY markets. The only place that it i gaining any footing is in replacing UNIX...and that's because the guys swithching to Linux/BSD/whatever are already well versed in supporting it themselves. But god forbid they ever have to help somebody!!

Again, fuck that. I'm all for paying money for software if it means the difference between getting support reliably or trying to deal with the "get lost n00b" assholes that seem to be so common in the open source world.

Re:Sigh

[cburley]

You share the very same attitude that i've encountered a number of times when dealing with Open Source - people always saying "hey - it's free! What more do you want??", and then try to tell me that their crapware is so much better than the closed-source for-profit alternative. Screw that!

Perhaps what you run into is more the result of volunteers carefully considering the degree to which you'll actually value the efforts they make to help you -- which, apparently, is pretty close to zero.

Meanwhile, if you want reliable support, you have to pay for it, at least in this universe.

If, on the other hand, you believe you can get along with free, ad-hoc support, on the whole, it seems the free-software community at least equals, perhaps betters, the proprietary-software community.

Finally, if you want to be able to choose your own team to support the software you use, then you can pretty much write off using proprietary software entirely, since supporting software without access to its source code is a nightmare.

By the way, whether you pay for the software or get it for free is orthagonal to all of the above. You can get Internet Explorer for free, but, presumably, without source, which means you'll have no hope of improving it to fit your needs (beyond whatever hooks MS provides). And you can pay $$ to get Redhat Linux, and hire your own support staff (or just a consultant, whatever) to improve it however you see fit, since it's free software (in the gnu.org sense; it comes with source code).

The only point at which paying for software and ensuring reliable support intersect is where the cost of providing some degree of support for a limited period of time is incorporated in the price of a single distribution of that software.

With proprietary software, for a given product, whether you're forced to pay for both to get the software (and thereby limited to a single vendor for support) is entirely up to the distribuor.

With free software, for every single product, you can choose whether to: a) acquire the software for free and maintain it on your own dime; b) acquire the software for free and pay a fee to a support vendor of your choice to support it; c) buy a distribution of the software and maintain it on your own dime (which probably means the cost of the distribution does not incorporate the cost of support, e.g. a Cheapbytes CD); and d) buy a distribution of the software and employ the support of the seller of the distribution (assuming that's part of the deal).

All in all, it seems that you're complaining that free software offers choices a, b, and c, rather than forcing you, as is generally the case for proprietary software, to accept "choice" d.

(I'll only lightly touch on the fact that, while my purchased Redhat Linux 7.1 permits a presumably-limited number of systems registered for support in their data base for a limited time, the licensing for the system in no way limits me to a fixed number of systems on which I may choose to, in fact, install it. I can even hand it out to a neighbor and let them copy it onto their system. Legally. I can do none of this with Windows 98, and I won't even get into the fact that proprietary software is written with a mindset that the software serves the vendor rather than its user, which is almost never the case with free software -- e.g. MS Encarta refusing to let you print a picture from its data base because it's "copyrighted".)

In the meantime, while I share many of the frustrations you express with the quality of software and support in the free/volunteer world (and probably have many more pet peeves of my own), I see no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially in a public forum, especially by singling out "offenders" who refuse to cater to my every whim for free, as you seem prone to do.

Re:My thoughts

[garett_spencley]

Who cares?

The impression that I get from Linus is that he never cared about free software or open source or whatever. The only reason he released his code was because that was the "academic" thing to do.

I mean this guy has to constantly listen to ESR and RMS's ramblings and all this bullshit about free software and open source that he doesn't give a shit about.

He's being dragged to conventions and always being hit up for interviews etc. It must be really annoying.

All I know is that if I were Linus I would have jumped ship about 5-7 years ago.

So wether GNU was responsible for bringing Linux where it is today is totally irrelevant. Linus doesn't give a shit about GNU or FSF and would have simply used other tools to compile his work and wether he released his code or not in Sept. '91 does not matter.

I mean holly shit. The company I work for develops our product on Linux and uses gcc/gdb/automake/autoconf/libtool etc. to do all the development. Does that mean we should call it GNU/(our_product)? Fuck no! If there were no GNU tools available we would simply use something else.

We don't care that it's free. We don't care that it's open source. We would gladly pay for a proprietary, expensive alternative. Sure being free and OSS is nice but no one would really give a shit if it wasn't.

--
Garett