Revolution OS
This was a very interesting movie to show the convergence of so many people's ideas and work. Everyone in the movie is successful, I believe, because of the love of their work and their want to share the love they have for their work. I found the web of connections between all the characters in the movie fun to follow. The main characters are Eric Raymond, Cathedral and the Bazaar author, Co-Founder, The Open Source Initiative; Bruce Perens, Open Source Definition author, Co-Founder, The Open Source Initiative; Richard Stallman, GNU Manifesto author; Linus Torvalds, wrote the Linux kernel; Larry Augustin, Ph.D., Co-Founder, CEO, VA Linux Systems; Michael Tiemann, Co-Founder, Cygnus Solutions; Brian Behlendorf, one of the original developers of the Apache HTTP Server; and finally Frank Hecker of Netscape.Everyone in the movie agrees that there needs to be an alternative to proprietary software. However, Richard Stallman's radical anti-intellectual property stance comes across as very strange. Nevertheless, he is a driving force of the free software movement and his ideas therefore deserve some respect. Unfortunately, they are bundled with a heaping helping of arrogance; although the GNU software does, indeed, form the backbone of the Linux operating system, his insistence that it be called GNU/Linux seems a bit over the top. His unusual view that cooperating and sharing are more important than powerful, reliable software is shown by the GNU Hurd, which remains unfinished despite having been the initial goal of the GNU project. The most recent status report from the homepage for Hurd says:
The GNU Hurd is under active development and a stable version has not yet been released. Be aware that: there is a lot of work yet to be completed; you will find bugs; your system will crash. That said, there is a lot of room for contributions at all levels: development of the Hurd and Mach proper, porting applications, writing documentation and, most importantly, user feedback.²
Also I found it interesting when Richard accepted the award at IDG/Linux World conference and then tried to explain why he couldn't accept it.
Giving the Linus Torvalds award to the Free Software Foundation is sort of like giving the Han Solo award to the Rebel Fleet.
Other open software developers have no difficulty with the commercialization of free software. For example, Eric Raymond says:
Reporters often ask me these days if I think the open-source community will be corrupted by the influx of big money. I tell them what I believe, which is this: commercial demand for programmers has been so intense for so long that anyone who can be seriously distracted by money is already gone. Our community has been self-selected for caring about other things-accomplishment, pride, artistic passion, and each other.3
Richard still believes that Open Source and Free Software are two totally different philosophical views.4 It seems currently he is still politically involved in trying to advance his ideology of Free Software and GNU and other political views he favors. GNU GPL(General Public License) written to defend the freedom of all the software users is his greatest contribution, in my opinion. I may change my mind about that as I do some further reading though.
Even though I have looked more into Richard Stallman while finally writing this paper, originally it was Larry Augustin and VA Linux SystemsVA Linux Systems became VA Software in December of 2001 as they had decided to leave the hardware business and focus on software development. Because they were getting stiff competition from other hardware vendors offering Linux as a pre-installed operating system. In May of 2007, the company changed its name to Sourceforge Inc. and merged with Open Source Technology Group. They now provide the SourceForge Development Intelligence application. SourceForge, Inc. is still traded on NASDAQ as LNUX as shown in the movie. As far as I can tell, the IPO talked about in the movie held the record for "Most successful IPO ever" from December 9, 1999 until Google's IPO. Friday's closing stock price for LNUX was $2.01. SourceForge operates SourceForge.net, Slashdot, Linux.com, IT Managers Journal, NewsForge, and Freshmeat. SourceForge, Inc. owns several well-known websites, including ThinkGeek and Slashdot. This really was fun to find out, because my husband reads Slashdot everyday and Freshmeat and Linux.com once in a while. Plus Slashdot was mentioned in the movie a few times.
In summary, this was a very fun paper to write, I know that I rambled, but this is perhaps how all the people in the movie have most impacted technology. I ramble because there is so much to see and do on the internet. I believe the software, businesses, foundations and the people talked about in the movie helped to make the internet a large and free depository of information with the software they developed. I want to read it all and tell about it all.
"The GNU Operating System" GNU.org. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.gnu.org>.
"Why GNU/Linux" GNU.org. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html>.
"Why Open Source misses the point of free software" GNU.org. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html>.
"The GNU Hurd" GNU.org. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq.en.html>.
"hurd - Free Software Directory" GNU.org. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://directory.fsf.org/project/hurd/>.
"Free as in Freedom: Chapter 11" O'Reilly Online Catalog. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch11.html>.
"Links to Other Free Software Sites" GNU.org. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions>.
"GNU/Linux User Group:: Howrah Chapter Forums" GNU/Linux User Group Howrah (India) Chapter. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.glug-howrah.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=361>.
"Salon| The free software story" Salon.com. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://archive.salon.com/tech/special/opensource/>.
"Welcome! Free Software Foundation" Free Software Foundation. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.fsf.org/>.
"Larry Augustin's Weblog" Larry Augustin's Weblog. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/>.
"Linux.com::When VA was the news" Linux.com. 30 Feb. 2008. 30 Feb. 2008 <http://www.linux.com/feature/16100>.
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