Movie "Revolution OS"?

[NoHero]

Have you seen it? It's about the free software foundation, Linux and Open Source. It tells the history how it all began, and the "founder" of this "revolution" were intervied about it. So you see Richard Stallman (wow never meant that he is some kind of long-hair-hippie - Never mind this, I really appreciated his arguments), Linus Torvald and some other guys of CopyLeft, Cygnus and so on.

I really appreciated its value. It shows the benefits of free software and the philosphy behind it. But it only shows the benefits. The film would be much better if you get some arguments from the other site (e.g. from Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer) too.

What do you think about it? Or what do you think about the Free Software Foundation, OpenSource, Linux generally? Will it throw Microsoft out of business?

Any comments very appreciated.

[darwen]

Will free software throw Microsoft out of business. Nope.

In my experience :

Microsoft OS :
Easy to use and graphical.

Freeware OS :
Really hard to use (config files all over the place) & non-graphical.

Each to their own really. From personal experience I don't trust freeware software. Mind you I only partially trust commercial software but I trust it more than freeware.

But consider this : if all software was free what would all of us programmers do for a living ? Work in MacDonalds ? As Estate Agents ? Drive buses ?

I think you'll find that 99% of all freeware software is written by people in their spare time after writing software for commercial companies. In this respect it won't be as good as the software you write for your 'day job' simply because you're knackered when you're writing it.

I have learned this from experience. I write a great deal of software at home and I don't work as well at 2am than I do at 9am in my day job. It takes longer, it's certainly more arduous and I tend to find that I get more bugs.

I have no problems with freeware software : there are some truly excellent examples of some apps which are free (and I can't understand why the people aren't charging for them) but they tend to be few and far between in my experience.

As to 'open sourced' products : we know from experience that managing a team of 5 or 6 programmers on a project is difficult. Everyone has their own programming styles and unless the company is ruthless with coding standards you end up treading on each others toes all the time.

How can you manage a product with 5 or 6 hundred programmers, all pulling in different directions ?

In principal I've got no problems with freeware even though I personally shy away from it.

But everyone has to make a buck.

Even Linux & MySQL which are 'open sourced' are charging for their products now.

We all have to eat after all...

And how much is Richard Stallman worth ? Or the others ? If they're giving software away for free where's all this money coming from ?

Truth is their software is free until you need to make money out of it. Then they charge for it. Which means it's not really free is it ? Besides the fact that with 'open sourced' applications what you're effectively doing is getting your users to fix the bugs in your system and then you make money out of it. Rather underhand if you ask me.

Darwen.

[Andreas Masur]

I write a great deal of software at home and I don't work as well at 2am than I do at 9am in my day job. It takes longer, it's certainly more arduous and I tend to find that I get more bugs.

....quite interesting...it is the other way round with me...

[YourSurrogateGod]

....quite interesting...it is the other way round with me...

Du musst schlafen .

[s|lent]

ive seen it the other day, its an EXCELLENT documentary, i love the way Stallman and Torvalds think... their ideas are remarcable, and the whole Open Source concept is very interesting.
oh, and lol, i liked how bill gates was presented as being the proprietary software devil... actually these kinds of movies are very useful, cuz they allow people to find out what really is the cause for the whole monopoly that microsoft has..

[darwen]

..what that IBM made one of the biggest corporate mistakes in history ? Also they were extremely lucky - Bill Gate's company wasn't the first one IBM approached to do the OS for their PC. They were turned away from the first company they approached by the MD's wife !

I think their divorce settlement was about $ 3 billion because that's how much money she lost him ! (not serious of course, but funny if it ever happened).

Darwen.

[Latem]

I thought the movie was interesting, and insightful.

I find I am able to identify with the open source ppl. Most of my professional work experience has been programming under Linux, and I've been using Linux as a main OS for years.

Will free software throw Microsoft out of business. Nope.

One could only hope. :/

In my experience :

Microsoft OS :
Easy to use and graphical.

Freeware OS :
Really hard to use (config files all over the place) & non-graphical.

I assume by freeware OS you mean an open source os like Linux or Unix. I don't know what youve tried, but Linux is most of the time just as easy as windows. The only problem is hardware compatibility. You gotta make sure all your comp's hardware is compatable with the OS you are using. My Linux box installed fine, and everything worked perfecty since day 1. I found only once I had to mess with a config file.

Each to their own really. From personal experience I don't trust freeware software. Mind you I only partially trust commercial software but I trust it more than freeware.

Well, you shouldn't trust freeware. Lots of freeware has spyware, adware, trojans and such. But again, there is a difference b/w freeware and open source software. And you should definitly trust open source software more than any closed software. Why? Well you can just look @ code and see what it does.

Again I must point out that there is a difference between open source software and freeware. "Free" in context of open source means "Free" as in "Free speech" not free as in "free beer".

Open Source software by its very nature results in better software. There is planty of evidence for this. Linux is a better operating system than windows from more perspectives than not. Security probably being the most obvious example. And dont get me started on Internet Explorer. Even OpenOffice is better with backward compatibility between different .doc versions than MS word.

Finally, the fact that so many big companies (IBM, Novell, Sun ...) are embrasing open source software means that there is money to be made off it. A guy I know from school worked (as in get paid) on Eclipse at IBM last summer. So obviously open source is, somehow, part of their buisiness strategy.
I dont know about other linux companies, but since I use Mandrake linux, I know that Mandrakesoft made like 1.5 million Euro profit last year, and that's after they were near bankrupsy a few years ago. And now Mandrake linux is probably the most popular linux distribution on desktop.


Latem