Sundance Channel Showing "Revolution OS" Monday Night

SnickleFritz writes "Monday the 18th at 9pm the Sundance Film channel will be broadcasting a documentary about the OSS Movement. It will feature interviews with Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman. It labels them as "computer visionaries." While it will probably be old news to most people here, I will still tape it and loan it to every OSS doubting Thomas in my shop." CD: It should be noted that cmdrtaco is in this, talking about free software while lounging on an inflatable sofa at linuxworld. Clearly you'll want to go buy a big screen TV to watch this. This is the same movie that was screened at SXSW last year and at LinuxWorld a few times. Other people featured in the movie include Michael Tiemann, Bruce Perens and Larry Augustin.

Comments

ESR?

[Dionysus]

Will ESR talk about how M$ will collapse within six months again?

heh

[nomadic]

They've been running commercials on IFC for a few days; first time I saw I had a moment of cognitive dissonance--"Wha? What's Richard Stallman doing in my TV? He's supposed to be in my computer..."

Re:heh

[AnalogBoy]

And all this time, *I* thought he was supposed to be in a mental institution :)

Re:heh

[dwbryson]

I saw this movie in denver when it was here for a film festival a couple months ago. And the director JTS Moore had a little question/answer session afterwards. He said that during the 6-9 months he filmed this he interviewed RMS like 4 times on different trips to the east cost( a couple months apart) and *every time* he was wearing the same shirt. Watch the movie, look at his shirt... same in ever shot... you'd think it was shot in one sitting... but you'd be wrong.

Re:heh

[AnalogBoy]

AnalogOS STOP 0x00000001:
Disgusting_Cross_Reference(RMS_Naked)
Reference d from RonJeremy.o
By Pedro@0xSLASHDOT

Purging Stomach... OK
Purging Memory.... OK
Eliminating Pedro. OK

{cerebrum} ok _

the sundance channel?!

[edrugtrader]

what cable package comes with that?! time to get the old black box out.

Don't you mean....

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/Visionaries?

Awesome!

[Oliver Defacszio]

Yeah, show a whole bunch of people who have never heard of OSS before Stallman and Raymond. If you're lucky, Stallman will spend a half-hour flipping out over the term "open source" and Raymond will regail us all with his harrowing ascent into riches. Why not throw Dan Bernstein or Theo de Raadt in there too, just to make sure absolutely everyone is turned off?

I've said it before and I'll say it again- using those two malcontented weirdos to "sell" anything is professional suicide.

Re:Awesome!

[Fweeky]

> I've said it before and I'll say it again- using
> those two malcontented weirdos to "sell" anything
> is professional suicide.

Yup, never mind breaking up Microsoft or forcing them to open their API's, just make them to take on RMS as their chief marketing bod.

Of course, we'll have to run him through a copy of sed -e s/GNU/Microsoft/ first to make sure he has the desired effect.

Re:Awesome!

[Theo DeRaadt]

Why would it be a problem if I were to be on the show? I've created the most secure, stable operating system available under a truely Free license. I forked from NetBSD. I turned shit into gold with my Midas touch. People ought to be paying me to appear on television.

If nothing else catches their eye about open source software, maybe it would be the assurance that a team of experienced developers out there are developing the next generation of freely available information security tools (OpenSSH and OpenSSL, anyone?) that are already tightly integrated with a strong, BSD-based OS. We've already started working closely with several crypto-card manufacturers to write drivers for lightning-fast VPNs.

You are right about ESR, though. He's a nut.

Shameless....

[Anonymous Coward]

This story was shamelessly ripped from kuro5hin

see?

Lets give credit where credit is due

Re:Shameless....

[Surt]

oh the kuroshin jealousy is just so transparent it's painful to watch. many people who submit stories submit them to multiple sites, hoping to get noticed somewhere. slashdot just has better quality control than kuroshin, so it takes a little longer for the stories to get posted (not that slashdot quality is perfect, just better than kuroshin).

I think I understand now....

[evilviper]

So, everything related to GNU or Linux is revolutionary, but the thousands of people writing Open Source operating systems & programs before the GPL got popular, were just a fluke? Just and oddity that doesn't deserve a second look?

Or are we just pandering to your love of buzzwords? Oh yeah, make sure you have an American Flag in the corner too... That would complete the picture.

Re:I think I understand now....

[bytes256]

I concur...the BSD folks were far more visionary...they kinda invented the concept of built-in networking and made a very nice portable interface for networking (sockets)...they invented the visual editor (vi)...and they wrote the first alternative to the Bourne shell (csh)

Now those are visionaries...I appreciate the work of Linus and crew, but for all intents and purposes they're rewriting UNIX...the BSD folks did that more than 20 years ago.

Re:I think I understand now....

[evilviper]

First off, I can understand how anyone living outside the US would not understand the implication.

Ever since Sept 11th 2001, every News program on TV has had an American flag in a corner throughout the show. Most new commericals show people standing in front of multiple waving flags.

This is not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people sticking US flags on their cars, and Red White & Blue pins on their person. (A sort of sign saying "I'm a mindless tool" if you ask me.)

In addition, the film is being shown in the US and I must say that I believe Americans do at least make up the majority of Open Source developers.

Is this the one with..

[antis0c]

..the nude commentary by Cowboyneal at end? .. No wait.. that was a drea.... nevermind.

Encode it in Divx

[Link-chan]

Someone should encode it in Divx for all the Slashdotters. I might not be able to see it (not sure if I have the Sundance channel) and others might not be able to see it either.

Argh.. don't copy it..

[divert]

Ehh.. the video isn't GPLed.. don't copy it.. go here.. http://www.revolution-os.com/page1.html and do as it says.. mail them and hopefully they will put it out on video or DVD then you can buy it..

Weeeeee!

[Leven Valera]

Clearly you'll want to go buy a big screen TV to watch this.

It's the only way they could fit RMS's ego on the screen. :)

Relax, it's a joke. I can feel the flames already.

Huge?

[DeadBugs]

"cmdrtaco is in this, ....while lounging on an inflatable sofa at linuxworld. Clearly you'll want to go buy a big screen TV to watch this"

Now I have never seen 'taco but is he a large man that requires an extra size TV to view?

I've seen it

[joeflies]

I think that the film plays linus fairly close to his public personality (carefree about the implications of linux, doing it because he likes it), and it does show raymond, perens, and tienman as the evangelists.

But the most suprising portroyal is how Stallman comes out. It shows a much more ballanced view of the GNU philosophy without coloring it with all the other stuff that Stallman gets knocked around for. They do show some of the conflict coming out between Stallman and his view of Linux, especially the footage of the LinuxWorld 99 acceptance speech.

Movie is better than I expected, and I like the fact that there is so much story behind where Linux came from, although it does paint a fairly narrow view of where Linux is going. Majority of it comes from the linux-mania of 99, and a footnote regarding VA Linux's stock runup and down.

Re:No sundance!

[sam_handelman]

Silence! This is slashdot! You will not speak of analog media here!

Make a DivX out of it and distribute it on Gnutella, Kazaa, OpenNap etc.

Anyone who mails a VHS tape will be consigned to the same hell as people who think .NET is neat.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

DVD

[caldroun]

I just got an email from J.T.S. Moore, the director. He tells me that the DVD will be out sometime towards the end of the year.

That's no lady, sir...

[pcwhalen]

"cmdrtaco is in this, talking about free software while lounging on an inflatable sofa"

If you look carefully, you will see this is NOT AN INFLATABLE SOFA but intead its Stallman's INFLATABLE DATE.

OK. Mod me down. It was worth it. Watch where you sit, Taco my boy.

Watch the first 9 minutes over at Ifilm.com

[EraseEraseMe]

Blatant stealing of link from previous poster

My review of the 9 minutes:

Linus seems like a nice enough guy, quiet, proto-typical geek, tends to talk a bit too technical but uses metaphors, comparisons to get his point across...Overall grade: B
Bruce Perens knows what he's talking about, but is either A) Amazed at the shiny flashing light on the top of the camera or B) staring at himself in the reflection of the camera. He needs to sit back, relax, and stop swinging around like a monkey...Overall Grade: C+
Mr Stallman handles himself well enough with an interviewer, but tends to talk over the heads of any non-technical viewer. His anecdote is interesting though, the loss of freedom because of having to use passwords..I wonder if he'd still give the same argument...Overall grade: B-
Eric Raymond scares me...and his obvious loathing for Microsoft is dripping off of every word "I'm your worst nightmare" That's jokes we tell around the office, not in public...Overall grade: C

9 minutes was enough of an anti-MS stance for me...the female voice, reading Bill Gates' letter to the hobby club was embarassingly melodramaticized.

On monday and tuesday I am boycotting Slashdot...

[Travoltus]

Just in case a follow-up on this is posted, which will certainly result in Richard Stallman being flamed by all the under-achieving gen-x legends in their own mind species of trolls and ingrates, whose very enjoyment of the freedom granted by GNU/Linux was because of Stallman's creation, propagation, and defense of the GPL.

(How's that for the world's longest run-on sentence??)

Says who?

[FallLine]

Why should we believe that Linux's success, never mind "freedom", owes to the GPL? Here's a more probable hypothesis for why Linux is under the GPL license:

a) there were a bunch of free tools out there that happened to make life a little easier for the developers and were/happened to be under the GPL.

b) the developers, not much caring for any particular open ideology, decided that it was worth the hassle to go GPL to get those tools.

c) the viral nature of the GPL ensured that it continued to remain under the GPL and not OTHER open licenses. note: This is not the same thing as saying that that the GPL kept it open and/or alive, just that it remained under GPL.

Even if you accept that the GPL played some kind of important role (which is a real stretch if you ask me), it's JUST an idea and a rather trivial piece of work at that. For people that espouse the ideas that "information deserves to be free", it seems rather ironic to believe that you owe some kind of tithe to the person(s) that originated the idea ("obvious")and the text ("trivial") of the GPL. You laugh at patents and copyrights that do more and expect less...