MovieChat Forums > Revolution OS (2002) Discussion > point of revolution not clear to me

point of revolution not clear to me

posted 17 years ago by dg135
14 replies | jump to latest

The movie did not clarify what the overall point of this "revolution" is. "Free as in freedom (ie, liberty), not as in beer", suggests that bringing information technology to the poor was not the goal of the "revolution". The only goal seemed to be getting programmers to be more open with their source code, so that there would be more opportunities for geeks in business (the success of the supposed business opportunity of Linux was allegedly demonstrated in the film by the company VA Linux, with its high stock price. VA Linux proved less successful than its initial stock offering, and ultimately changed its name to VA Software.)

Anyway, "we geeks should share code, so that business opportunities are spread out to more of us" is not the sort of revolutionary goal that makes for interesting movies. Basically just self-absorbed programmers, rather than anything like the storming of the Bastille, is all we see in this film.

If I had seen abandonned computers being fixed with Linux, and donated to poor neighbourhood schools or something, I might have thought something of it. Nothing of the sort here in this film.

[–] Druff 17 years ago

I take it you don't work in the software industry. If you did, you wouldn't have any trouble understanding. The movie is self explanatory, so I shan't waste my time trying to make you "get it".

[–] Pope_Palpatine 16 years ago

Druff,

You don't understand dg135's point, which is a legitimate one. In this doc, you see all these well-educated white guys squabbling amongst themselves over software issues without addressing what a real revolution is about. It would be more about taking an active role in getting computers into the hands of the poorest in society. The poster for the movie co-opts the imagery of social activist protesters holding up protest signs. It also co-opts the Marxist motto of "Workers of the world, unite!" into the movie tagline "Hackers, Programmers & Rebels UNITE!"

Someone who sees those marketing ploys and decides to watch the movie thinking they're going to see something truly revolutionary will be disappointed by the actual story of in-fighting among some of the most privileged in society.

______________________________________
I don't mess around. That's who I am.

[–] Druff 16 years ago

It would be more about taking an active role in getting computers into the hands of the poorest in society.

The real issue is that both of you numbnuts have a very narrow minded view of what "revolution" means, that it must mean "helping the poor". What are you, 7th graders?

A revolution is basically a radical paradigm shift. And the shift from domination by proprietary software business models to such widespread proliferation of the open source business model is nothing if not revolutionary. It's really quite a simple concept, and both of you seem to understand the difference between the models. Apparently you're just unable to wrap your heads around the fact that they used the word "Revolution" in the title, because they aren't giving software and hardware to Ethiopia.

[–] Pope_Palpatine 16 years ago

Great observation, dg135.

______________________________________
I don't mess around. That's who I am.

[–] dg135 16 years ago

Thanks. As someone who uses Linux (specifically, Debian), and, given the title of the film, I had greater expectations for it. The film was somewhat interesting nonetheless, though. Still, a bit of a disappointment for me.

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

I have noticed Debian users tend to be more policital then other distro uses I don't know why. In my experience I always get drawn into political debates by Debian users.

[–] bruce-129 15 years ago

I think you are right ... it is a good point. People are afraid, chilled, to talk about
the reasons for open souce, because it is ideological, and political as well.

Every time OS moves forward, the propriety folks have to find another way to
extend things to make money from all of this tech.

It used to be the things in our world were open to us to create or use them.
These days though you buy some media, a song, a movie, etc, it is almost
like you are legally not even supposed to use it.

What is the point of DVD sales if you cannot show a DVD in your home. Or a
business. If you tell the story you are violating copyright, if you craft a
derivativr work you can be sued. Hell, you cannot even sing happy birthday
anymore.

And most of the Linux companie these days seeem to have been taken over
for profit, and there is very little progress that i can see, except slicker
desktops and screen savers.

Of course at the same time, there is almost 0 innovation done at either
Apple of Microsoft. I cannot believe with 20 years, billions of dollars and
the most talented people in the world windows is so bad.

it is almost like it gets worse over time.

I use PCs, Apples, Linux, and FreeBSD. None of them are really as good
as they should be. There is no unifiying plan interface, idea, it is all people
who want to gain something playing games with each other.

On the other hand, Linux has gotten better since I first used it in 1993.
First there was no networking, then no X-windows, or sound, it has
gotten a lot better.

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

"And most of the Linux companie these days seeem to have been taken over
for profit, and there is very little progress that i can see, except slicker
desktops and screen savers."
Don't let your political ideology prevent others from experimenting with applying linux to their business model. These same companies are also contributing to the software of linux. For example IBMs relationship with red hat. As long as the software is open other people can merge their code into their own distro and thats a good thing. Linux will always be open source so any users of linux are potential developers. Your ignoring all the greate hardware compatibility were getting from these proprietary venders. I'm amazed at the OpenGL support graphic card vendors are doing for linux. And don't forget all these great Database tools we have great access to these days. If only we had better ldap tools though I'd like to see more development there. Sure we have OpenLDAP and other ldap providers but we are having to write programs to read and write to LDAP these days. ApacheDirectory has a nice browswer but what about a user mange

"On the other hand, Linux has gotten better since I first used it in 1993.
First there was no networking, then no X-windows, or sound, it has
gotten a lot better."
XFree86 was around back in 93 for linux it was just a bitch to set up. You had to know the dot clock timings of your monitor and a bunch of other crap or else (poof you blow your monitor) and I could only ever get it to work in 16 color mode at the time. And linux always had TCP/IP networking inside the kernel since the 1.0 days. It was literally compiled into the kernel you coulden't get away from it. The internet wasn't very graphical in those days as we had slow modems and used lynx and Usenet Telnet back then. I really though Gopher was going to dominate the internet but nope it was HTTP that took over. You probably don't remember because PPP connections over modem were pretty frustrating to set up as well (You had to write your own ppp-dialer script, before PPP we were stuck with Serial links. SLIP which was even harder to configure. . If you were a windows user at this time Microsoft didn't care about TCP/IP networking till Win95 so you were forced to use 3rd party Trumpet winsock if you wanted to get on the internet.

I also remember having a clickable option to compile in Novell IPX/SDX into the kernel. I don't remember if NetBEUI was in the options but I'm sure it was. Either way linux was a head of its time with TCP/IP and networking in general. Microsoft was pushing NetBEUI and refused to support TCP/IP. The growth of the internet made them come to reality around Win95. Did apple support TCP/IP back then or was it pushing the industry to use AppleTalk.

[–] Roddenhyzer 14 years ago

Basically just self-absorbed programmers

Pretty much. The entire thing had a strange "self-celebratory" vibe to it, more like an advertisement than a documentary.

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Timescrew 12 years ago

I think the best way to understand this is to analogize it a bit differently.

Think of an author and his book. If he writes that book, that book is his sole intellectual property. No one can take that book and add a few more chapters to it to suit their own tastes and needs. Same thing goes for a piece of music, or artwork. Because it is something made it belongs to its creator and should not be modified or tampered, or in anyway diverting from how the creator originally intended it - For good or for worse.

Now, think of Science. A scientist experiments with something, and publishes a paper on the results of his experiment. Another scientist can pick up that paper, and conduct experiments of his own and publish his own work, but he must cite the other scientist's work as part of his process. Eventually another scientist somewhere down the road makes a groundbreaking discovery. He might even win a Nobel. But he could never have done it without having built upon the work of other scientists.

The idea here is that as scientists experiment and make their discoveries the end result will be for the betterment of mankind.

The people of the Open Software movement believe that the more people improve upon the source code of a particular project the better it will be and in this way the overall evolution of that program will increase the harmony and understanding between programmers around the world. Further, the knowledge gained from cooperatively working together is more valuable to us as a species than whatever profit a single being or corporate entity can earn off of it.

In this sense, "Free" means that you have "Freedom" to experiment and improve upon the work of another programmer as long as you credit the original programmer and take ownership of your contributions to it. So it is "Free" not like in free beer (something for nothing) but "Free" like free speech.

Now one thing that Stallman points out is that you can still make money off of it, which is important because programmers have to eat too, and this is usually done with the consulting and support services. But that is not the main idea of the "revolution" that they are trying to express here.

Rather, don't handicap your programmers by restricting them to only using proprietary tools and code. This is an opposite of how the industry had been running - hence why they called it a revolution.

I hope this helps.

_________________________________________
There is no flavor text!

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

"Free as in freedom (ie, liberty), not as in beer"

Free as in beer is ok but people prefer to see the source code so that if the vendor abandons the work a dedicated user can pick up the mantle and continue development. We need source code more then we need binaries. If we are gurenteed have the source code then some one will eventualy release a binary as free beer. IE with out source code you have less oppertunity for free beer, The free speech comes in as "I should have the write to add to your source code for my own projects".

My favorite example is if your a company that makes mice. In addition to releasing a binary for MS-DOS(The domanent operating system in the 80s) at lease release the source code so we can modifiy it to work with other Systems. I mean what benifit does a mouse manufacturer have in keeping their driver as closed source.

" The only goal seemed to be getting programmers to be more open with their source code, so that there would be more opportunities for geeks in business (the success of the supposed business opportunity of Linux was allegedly demonstrated in the film by the company VA Linux, with its high stock price. VA Linux proved less successful than its initial stock offering, and ultimately changed its name to VA Software.)"
Yes that is the case. Part of the revolution was to show that companies don't have to be closed software to make a profit. Even today vendors like IBM are contributing to red hat etc.

"If I had seen abandonned computers being fixed with Linux, and donated to poor neighbourhood schools or something, I might have thought something of it. Nothing of the sort here in this film. "
The software must be open from the begining in order for people to compile the code and distribute it to the poor people around the community or globe. In fact there are those in the community that are doing just that. The OS. is also all around you. In your linksys routers, in your android machines (At least the kernel is). Your playstations are BSD based though so good luck ever seeing the source code for those things. :/

[–] Satan2016 (23544) 7 years ago

This is a ten year old thread, so most posters were not aware of Android. $50 tablets and $100 phones are what brought computing to millions in the developing world.

That hardware is from various Chinese companies. It depends on ARM System-on-Chip that costs less than $20, but is more powerful than the PCs used 20 years ago to develop Linux.

The software is mostly open-source Linux and Android ASOP, the latter developed by Google and given away for free. So it's a combination of programmers working for nothing or making over $50K a year.

Maybe someone should make a sequel!

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Yea your right I forgot android is pretty recent.