Revolution OS

I was at Agenda 2000

and uh, one of the people who was there was Craig Mundie,

who is some kind of high mucky muck at Microsoft,

I think uh, vice-president of consumer products or something like that.

And uh, I hadn't actually met him

I, I, I, uh, bumped in to him in an, in an elevator... in an elevator

And uh, I looked at his badge and said, "Oh, I see you work for Microsoft."

And he looked back to me and said, "Oh, yeah and what do you do?"

And I thought he seemed just a sort of a tad dismissive

I mean, here's the archetypal, you know, guy in a suit

looking at a scruffy hacker

And so I gave him the thousand yard stare and said,

"I'm your worst nightmare."

Wonderview Productions PRESENTS

A J.T.S. Moore FILM

REVOLUTION OS

For most its short, but colorful history,

the computer industry has been dominated

by the Windows operating system.

But that could soon change,

as Windows faces a strong challenge from Linux

Silicon Valley has long been the place

to develop new technology,

start new companies and get really rich.

Now The Valley is the front line in a revolution

fighting for that most politically incorrect of ideas:

individual freedom

Day and night, a loose confederation of

hackers and programmers zaps bits pieces of

computer code around the world as it builds the tools

to set computer users free

using open information and the free exchange of technology

to achieve its goals.

This revolution began in the 1980's with

the Free Software Movement and GNU project.

And now is most commonly associated

with Linux and the Open Source Movement.

What is Linux?

We do have one sector that taking off today.

It is the Linux-related sector.

And I thought this might be a good opportunity to say,

"What is Linux?"

And I'll answer this question for you.

Many of you probably already know,

but There are 12 million users out there

A computer Operating System developed by hundreds of

programmers collaborating on the Internet

A challenge to Microsoft Windows NT

Very popular for its speed

and so this's what the craze is about

To kind of explain what Linux is you have to

explain what an Operating System is

And... the thing about Operating System is you, I mean...

you're never ever supposed to see it.

Because...

nobody really uses an Operating System,

people use... programs... on their computer

And the only mission in life

of an operating system is to help those programs run.

So an operating system never does anything on its own

It's only waiting for the programs to

ask for certain resources or,

or, ask for a certain file on the disk

or ask for the programs to

connect them to the outside world.

And then the operating system comes, steps in and then

tries to make it easy for people to write programs

And, What is Open Source?

Open Source is a way for people to collaborate

on software without being encumbered by all of the problems of intellectual property,

having to negotiate contracts every time you buy a piece of software,

have a lot of lawyers involved.

In general, we just wanna get the software to work

and we want be able to have

people contribute fixes to that, etc..

So we sort of sacrifice some of

the intellectual property rights

and just let the whole world use the software

Before there could be Linux

There was Richard Stallman and the Free Software Movement.

They think of Richard Stallman as the...

great philosopher, right.

And think of me as the engineer

Richard Stallman is the founding father of the Free Software Movement.

Through his efforts to build the GNU Operating System.

He created the legal, philosophical and technological foundation

for the Free Software Movement.

Without these contributions,

it's unlikely that Linux and Open Source

would have evolved in to their current forms today

I joined the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971,

I joined... a thriving community of hackers,

people who loved programming,

loved exploring the what they could do with computers.

And they had developed a complete Operating System,

entirely written there.

And I became one of the team, that

continued to improve the Operating System, adding new capabilities

That was my job, and I loved it, we all loved it. That's why we were doing it.

And we called our system

"the Incompatible Time Sharing System"

which is an example of the

playful spirit

which defines a hacker.

Hackers are people who enjoy playful cleverness.

Well, it first started going wrong

as the outside world started pressuring us to have passwords.

We didn't have any passwords on our computer.

And the reason was that the hackers

who'd originally designed the system

realized that passwords were a way the administrators could control all the users.

And they didn't want to build tools

you know, locks and keys for the administrators to control them,

so they just didn't do it. They left that out

And we had the philosophy that whoever sitting at the computer

should be able to do whatever he wants

and somebody else who was there yesterday shouldn't be controlling what you do today

When they put passwords onto one of the machines at MIT

I and bunch of other hackers didn't like it,

I decided to try a subversive sort of hack.

I figured out how to decode the passwords,

so by looking at the database of encoded passwords

I could figure out what each person would actually type to login

And so I sent messages to people, saying,

"Hello? I see that you've chosen the password mumble,

whatever it was. How about if you do as I do

just type Enter for your password

it's much shorter, much easier to type".

And... of course with this message I was

implicitly telling them the security was really just a joke.

Anyway, but in addition I was letting them in on this hack.

And eventually, A fifth of all the users on that computer joined me

in using just Enter as their passwords.

[ Where did the ideas that lead to what is now called Open Source world?

How did that begin? Who began that? ]

It actually began with the start of computers because at that time

software was just passed around between people

And I think it was only like in the lates 70's or early 80's

That people started really closing up their software,

And saying, "No, you can never get a look at the source code.

You can't change the software even if it's necessary

for you to fix it, for your own application"

And... um, you can actually blame some of that on Microsoft,

They are one of the real pioneers of the proprietary software model.

In the mid 1970's, a group of hackers

and computer hobbyist in Silicon Valley formed the "Homebrew Computer Club".

In the club January 31, 1976 newsletter,

Bill Gates of the recently formed Microsoft,

wrote an open letter to the community

where he made a point by point argument for the relatively new concept of proprietary software

up to that point, the practice of computer users had been to freely pass around software

with not much thought given to its ownership

Known as An Open Letter to Hobbyists, Bill Gates writes,

"To me the most critical thing in the hobby market right now

is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself.

Without good software and an owner who understands programming,

A hobby computer is wasted.

Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Gates goes on to write, "The feedback we have gotten from

the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive.

Two surprising things are apparent, however.

1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC, and

2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists

makes the time spent on of Altair BASIC worth less than 2 dollars an hour

Why is this?

As the majority of hobbyists must be aware,

most of you steal your software.

Hardware must be paid for but software is something to share.

Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

Is this fair?

One thing you don't do by stealing software

is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had

MITS doesn't make money selling software.

One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written.

Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?

What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming,

finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute it for free?

The fact is,

no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software.

What about the guys who resell Altair BASIC?

Aren't they making money on hobby software?

Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end.

They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name,

and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from anyone who wants to pay up,

or has a suggestion or comment.

Signed Bill Gates, General partner, Micro-Soft.

In the late 70's and early 1980's, Richard Stallman was

doing Artificial Intelligence research and coding

at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.

Richard had a number of negative experiences

during that period which soured him

on the whole idea of commercial software.

uh... some company wanted to work on and wanted to fix was locked up.

and he couldn't get the company that owned on the code to let him fix it

even though it would have been to their advantage to do so.

And that put me into a moral dilemma, you see?

Because to get one of the modern computers of the day, which was the early 80's,

you would have to get a proprietory operating system.

The developers of those systems didn't share with other people,