Revolution OS is a 2001 documentary film that traces the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, open source, and the free software movement.

Directed by J. T. S. Moore, the film features interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf.

Synopsis[link]

The film begins with glimpses of Raymond, a Linux IPO, Torvalds, the idea of Open Source, Perens, Stallman, then sets the historical stage in the early days of hackers and computer hobbyists when code was shared freely. It discusses how change came in 1978 as Bill Gates, in his Open Letter to Hobbyists, pointedly prodded hobbyists to pay up. Stallman relates his struggles with proprietary software vendors at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, leading to his departure to focus on the development of free software, and the GNU project.

Torvalds describes the development of the Linux kernel, the GNU/Linux naming controversy, Linux's further evolution, and its commercialization.

Raymond and Stallman clarify the philosophy of free software versus communism and capitalism, as well as the development stages of Linux.

Michael Tiemann discusses meeting Stallman in 1987, getting an early version of Stallman's GCC, and founding Cygnus Solutions.

Larry Augustin describes combining GNU software with a normal PC to create a Unix-like workstation at one third the price and twice the power of a Sun workstation. He relates his early dealings with venture capitalists, the eventual capitalization and commodification of Linux for his own company, VA Linux, and its IPO.

Brian Behlendorf, one of the original developers of the Apache HTTP Server, explains that he started to exchange patches for the NCSA web server daemon with other developers, which led to the release of "a patchy" webserver, dubbed Apache.

Frank Hecker of Netscape discusses the events leading up to Netscape's executives releasing 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.^[1] This point was validated further after the film's release as the Netscape source code eventually became the Firefox web browser, reclaiming a large percentage of market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The film also documents the scope of the first full-scale LinuxWorld Summit conference, with appearances by Linus Torvalds and Larry Augustin on the keynote stage.

Much of the footage for the film was shot in Silicon Valley.

Screenings[link]

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.

Quotes[link]

I bumped into him (Craig Mundie of Microsoft) in an elevator. I looked at his badge and said, "Ah, you work for Microsoft."

He looked back at me and said, “Oh yeah, and what do you do?”

And I thought it was some kind of tad dismissive, here is a guy in a suit looking at a scruffy hacker. . . so I gave him a thousand yard stare and said, "I am your worst nightmare!"

—Eric S. Raymond

Giving the Linus Torvalds award to the Free Software Foundation is sort of like giving the Han Solo award to the Rebel Fleet.

—Richard Stallman

. . . and I realised he had read my document and understood it, and was now telling the press about this. Now, if you're like just a guy on the net who's not doing this for a job at all and you sort of write a manifesto and it spreads out through the world, and a year later the Vice President of Microsoft is talking about that, you'd think you were on drugs, wouldn't you? But that's what really happened.

—Bruce Perens

Reception[link]

Every review noted the historical significance of the information, and those that noticed found the production values high, but the presentation of history mainly too dry, even resembling a lecture. Ron Wells of Film Threat found the film important, worthwhile, and well thought out for explaining the principles of the free software and open source concepts. Noting its failure to represent on camera any debate with representatives of the proprietary software camp, Wells gave the film 4 of 5 stars.^[2] TV Guide rated the film 3 of 4 stars: "surprisingly exciting", "fascinating" and "sharp looking" with a good soundtrack.^[3] Daily Variety saw the film as "targeted equally at the techno-illiterate and the savvy-hacker crowd;" educating and patting one group on the head, and canonizing the other, but strong enough for an "enjoyable" recommendation.^[4]

On the negative side, the New York Times faulted the film's one-sidedness, found its reliance on jargon "fairly dense going", and gave no recommendation.^[5] Internet Reviews found it "a didactic and dull documentary glorifying software anarchy. Raging against Microsoft and Sun. . .", lacking follow-through on Red Hat and VALinux stock (in 2007, at 2% of peak value), with "lots of talking heads".^[6] Toxicuniverse.com noted "Revolution OS blatantly serves as infomercial and propaganda. Bearded throwback to the sixties, hacker Richard Stallman serves as the movement's spiritual leader while Scandinavian Linus Torvalds acts as its mild mannered chief engineer (as developer of the Linux kernel)."^[7]

To Tim Lord, reviewing for Slashdot, the film is interesting and worthy of viewing, with some misgivings: it is "about the growth of the free software movement, and its eventual co-option by the open source movement. . . it was supposed to be about Linux and its battle about Microsoft, but the movie is quickly hijacked by its participants." The film "lacks the staple of documentaries: scenes with multiple people that are later analyzed individually by each of the participants" (or indeed, much back-and-forth at all). Linux itself and its benefits are notably missing, and, "[w]e are never shown anyone using Linux, except for unhappy users at an Installfest." The debate over Linux vs Windows is missing, showing the origin of the OS only as a response to proprietary and expensive Sun and DEC software and hardware, and its growth solely due to the Apache web server. And Lord notes that the film shows, but does not challenge Torvalds or Stallman about their equally disingenuous remarks about the "Linux" vs "GNU/Linux" naming issue.^[8]

See also[link]

• The Code – another documentary film about Linux
• Open source
• Linux
• Free software movement
• Copyleft
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar

References[link]

External links[link]

• Documentary home page
• Revolution OS - complete film on Google Video
• Revolution OS at the Internet Movie Database
• Revolution OS at AllRovi
• Revolution OS Slashdot (20 April 2002)
• Revolution OS at Rotten Tomatoes
• Revolution OS at Metacritic

v t e GNU Project History GNU Manifesto Free Software Foundation Europe India Latin America History of free software Licenses GNU General Public License GNU Lesser General Public License Affero General Public License GNU Free Documentation License GPL linking exception Software GNU (variants) Hurd GNOME Bash GCC GNU Emacs glibc Coreutils Build system GNUnet Gnuzilla (IceCat) Gnash more... Public speakers Alexandre Oliva Benjamin Mako Hill Bradley M. Kuhn Eben Moglen Federico Heinz Georg C. F. Greve Loïc Dachary Ricardo Galli Richard Stallman Robert J. Chassell John Sullivan Other topics GNU/Linux naming controversy Revolution OS BadVista Defective by Design

v t e Linux Linux Adoption Adopters Criticism of desktop Linux History Kernel kernel names supported architectures Linus' Law Linux Foundation Linux-libre Tux vmlinux Distribution Distribution general comparison netbook-specific comparison Lightweight Linux distribution Live CD Live USB Package formats GNU Free Software Foundation GNU GNU GPL GNU/Linux naming controversy GNU packages GNU Project Window manager X Window Manager AfterStep Blackbox CTWM Enlightenment FVWM Hackedbox IceWM Metisse OLVWM PLWM PWM Sawfish vtwm wm2 wmx Xmonad User interface CLI GUI GNOME KDE Xfce LXDE Applications Desktop Devices Embedded Gaming LAMP Thin client People Jono Bacon Alan Cox Jon 'Mad Dog' Hall Benjamin Mako Hill Greg Kroah-Hartman David S. Miller Andrew Morton Ian Murdock Bruce Perens Daniel Robbins Mark Shuttleworth Richard Stallman Linus Torvalds Theodore Ts'o Patrick Volkerding Matt Zimmerman Media Free Software Magazine Linux.com Linux Format Linux For You Linux Gazette Linux Journal Linux-Magazin Linux Magazine Linux Outlaws LugRadio LWN.net O3 Magazine Phoronix Lists Distributions Distributions that run from RAM Live CDs Proprietary software for Linux System arrangement and features Startup process Kernel oops Console Framebuffer Kernel modules zRam Mobile Access Linux Platform Android Ångström bada LiMo Foundation LiMo Platform Linux Phone Standards Forum MeeGo Maemo Moblin Mobilinux Open Handset Alliance Openmoko OPhone webOS SHR Ubuntu Mobile Other topics Linux conference Linux Documentation Project Malware Linux Standard Base Linux User Group (LUG) Revolution OS SCO and Linux Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate The Code

Bruce Perens
Perens at the World Summit on the Information Society 2005 in Tunis speaking on "Is Free/Open Source Software the Answer?" Richard Stallman is on Perens's right
Occupation	Computer programmer
Known for	Open Source Initiative, BusyBox
Call-sign	K6BP
Website
perens.com

Bruce Perens is a computer programmer and advocate in the open source community. He created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source.^[1][2] He co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) with Eric S. Raymond.^[3]

In 2005, Perens represented Open Source at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, at the invitation of the United Nations Development Program. He has appeared before national legislatures and is often quoted in the press, advocating for open source and the reform of national and international technology policy.

Perens is also an amateur radio operator, with callsign K6BP. He is well known in the amateur radio community for his efforts towards open radio communications standards.^[4]

Viewpoint[link]

Perens poses Open Source as a means of marketing the free software philosophy of Richard Stallman to business people who are more concerned with profit than freedom, and states that open source and free software are only two ways of talking about the same phenomenon. This differs from Stallman^[5][6] and Raymond. Perens postulates an economic theory for business use of Open Source in his paper The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source and his speech Innovation Goes Public.^[7] This differs from Raymond's theory in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which having been written before there was much business involvement in open source, explains open source as a consequence of programmer motivation and leisure.

Organizations[link]

Perens is a former Debian Project Leader, a founder of Software in the Public Interest, founder and first project leader of the Linux Standard Base project, the initial author of BusyBox, and founder of the UserLinux project. Perens also has a book series with Prentice Hall PTR called the Bruce Perens' Open Source Series. He is an avid amateur radio enthusiast (callsign K6BP^[8]) and maintained technocrat.net, which he closed in late 2008 because its revenues did not cover its costs. He is also the founder of No Code International, an organization whose primary purpose was to eliminate morse code proficiency as a requirement to obtain an amateur radio license. This goal has been reached with the removal of code requirements from international law (International Telecommunications Union treaty provision S25.5), the new "code-free" rules introduced on 2007-02-23, and similar legal changes in almost all nations worldwide.^{[citation needed]}

Perens left OSI a year after co-founding it, with reasons explained in an email titled "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again".^[9] In February 2008, for the 10th anniversary of the Open Source, Perens published a message to the community called "State of Open Source Message: A New Decade For Open Source".^[10] For the same event, the 10th anniversary of Open Source, the ezine RegDeveloper published an interview with Bruce Perens where he revives an updated view on the past and the future, and the dangers of the Open Source, especially the useless proliferation of OSI approved licenses and the strength of the GPL 3.^[11] In addition, the interview covered Linus Torvalds' refusal to adopt the GPLv3 for the Linux kernel.^[12]

He was an employee of SourceLabs from June 2005 until December 2007.^[13] He is currently CEO of Kiloboot.

Creation of the Open Source Definition[link]

The Open Source Definition was first created by Perens as the Debian Free Software Guidelines, itself part of the Debian Social Contract. Perens proposed a draft of the Debian Social Contract to the Debian developers on the debian-private mailing list early in June, 1997. Debian developers contributed discussion and changes for the rest of the month while Perens edited, and the completed document was then announced as Debian project policy. On February 3, 1998, a group of people met at VA Linux Systems (without Perens) to discuss the promotion of Free Software to business from pragmatic terms, rather than the moral terms preferred by Richard Stallman. Christine Petersen of the nanotechnology organization Foresight Institute was present because Foresight took an early interest in Free Software, and Petersen suggested the term "Open Source". The next day, Eric Raymond recruited Perens to work with him on the formation of Open Source. Perens modified his Debian document into the Open Source Definition by removing Debian references and replacing them with "Open Source".

The original announcement of the Open Source Definition was made on February 9, 1998 on Slashdot^[14] and elsewhere; the definition was given in Linux Gazette on February 10, 1998.^[1]

Film[link]

Perens worked at Pixar for 12 years before leaving to work full-time on Open Source issues, and before then at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, spending a total of 19 years in the computer graphics and feature film industry. These two decades were the genesis of the 3-dimensional feature film animation that is taken for granted today. He is credited as a studio tools engineer on Toy Story 2 and A Bug's Life.^[15] He is featured in two documentaries on Open Source: Revolution OS and The Code-Breakers. He produced a video commercial, Impending Security Breach, for Sourcelabs in 2007.

Academia[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (December 2009)

Perens is finishing a three-year grant from the Competence Fund of Southern Norway. With this funding, he spent part of the summer as a visiting lecturer and researcher at University of Agder in 2006 and 2007, and does other work remotely. During this time he consulted the Norwegian Government and other entities on government policy issues related to computers and software. He previously worked remotely as Senior Scientist for Open Source with the Cyber Security Policy Research Institute of George Washington University.

UserLinux[link]

In 2003 Bruce Perens founded UserLinux, a distribution whose stated goal was, "Provide businesses with freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options designed to encourage productivity and security while reducing overall costs." ^[16]

2007 activities[link]

Perens remained active in representing open source to the world and advising several national governments and multinational corporations regarding Open Source. In 2007 some of his government advisory roles included: a meeting with the President of the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of parliament) in Italy and testimony to the Culture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies;^[17] a keynote speech at the foundation of Norway's Open Source Center, following Norway's Minister of Governmental Reform (Perens is on the advisory board of the center);^[18] he provided input on the revision of the European Interoperability Framework;^[19] and he was keynote speaker at a European Commission conference on Digital Business Ecosystems at the Centre Borschette, Brussels, on November 7.

2009 activities[link]

In 2009, Perens acted as an expert witness on open source in the Jacobsen v. Katzer U.S. Federal lawsuit. His report, which was made publicly available by Jacobsen, presented the culture and impact of open source software development to the federal courts.^[20]

BusyBox lawsuits[link]

Starting in 2007, several lawsuits were filed for infringement of BusyBox copyright and licensing. These lawsuits were filed by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), and some of the later managing developers of BusyBox.

In 2009, Bruce Perens released a statement about the lawsuits and those filing them. In it, he claims that he maintains a significant or even majority ownership of the software in the litigation, but was not contacted nor represented by the plaintiffs; and that some of the plaintiffs had themselves modified BusyBox and its distribution package in such a way as to violate applicable licensing terms and copyright owned by Perens and additional BusyBox developers. Perens supports enforcement of the GPL license used on Busybox. Because he was denied participation in the Busybox cases on the side of the prosecution, Perens started a consulting business to assist the defendants in coming into compliance with the GPL and arriving at an amicable settlement with the Software Freedom Law Center.

References[link]

External links[link]

Free software portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bruce Perens

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bruce Perens

• Bruce Perens' homepage
• Project Proposal and Call for Participation: The Linux Standard Base
• "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again", 1999
• Video with Bruce Perens at Hannover Industry Trade Fair, Germany, May 2008
• Linux Link Tech Show interview (audio), 2006, 2008
• No Code International
• Interview (audio) at Defrag Ohio with Meet the Bloggers
• A talk about open source recorded in Rome in June 2007
• Interview in ogg format on The Gutsy Geeks recorded 2009/07/25

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