The 24th Thingie

Well I was able to watch "Revolution OS" on the big screen courtesy of Jaye, who also provided popcorn to help keep us awake. I've been thinking about how I want to blog about this experience and I'm almost speechless. There are many snarky comments that I'd love to make about the production . In some places, I could actually see the SNL parody in place. One guy really reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite, but, since we didn't see him dance, it may not be an exact match.

Okay, enough of that.

Obviously, being in front of the camera is not what these guys do best. Creating a revolution is more up their alley. Despite, or maybe even because of, the interesting cast of characters, I found the history of the Revolution OS to be fascinating. It was very much a one-sided look at the evolution/revolution (the dramatization of Bill Gates' open letter and mood music throughout were highly entertaining), but I feel I have a much better understanding about what Linux is and the importance of open source.

The discussion of the term "open source" made me think of Valerie and "Words that Work". The connotation of the word "free" is interesting and means different things to different people. Most people think if something is free, that it must be shoddy. In order for something to have value, you must pay for it. Others, like the founder of the GNU movement, Richard Stallman (who I find to be a bit frightening), strongly believes free is more like free speech as opposed to having to pay money for something. The reason they came up with the term "open source" is to find better "words that work" to express the idea of community sharing.

It was also interesting to see when Linus's and Richard's philosophy parted company. Stallman became even more staunch in defending his thoughts, while Linus was more laid back and seemed to be grounded in the real world. Again, watching the movie, you could see a bit of the bias. At the Linux convention towards the end, when Stallman is accepting his award, after a bit, instead of staying focused on Stallman, the camera's focus wanders to Linus's daughter over in the wings. Stallman is still in the frame, but more of the interest seems to be on the little girl and her antics.

Again, overall, I found this video very enlightening. I was one of the first alpha testers of Ubuntu at HCL and found it fairly easy to use. I'm glad I know the history of Linux and why Luis, Mike and company are so rabid about it. I go through culture-shock every day as I bounce from my desktop Ubuntu, Windows XP on the info desks and Vista (not my fault) at home. I hear talk of Linux/Ubuntu laptops and would certainly be interested in trying one of those to see how it would work for what I do at home.

I did flee rather quickly at the end when the geeks started singing their own composition about Linux...=:O