Let's be realistic.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

If this really is a serious attempt for making a documentary it tries to cover so many areas that it should have been made a series instead. It fails to give a proper history of open source/free software. It fails to recreate the role of open source/free software during the period of focus, namely the dot com boom and crash of 1997-2001. It fails to give any new insights, even for the year it was made. And it fails miserably to have any kind of objectivity or dialogue.The value of this movie are the interviews with the key persons of the various open source and free software movements, though it becomes quite tiresome to sit and wait for the goodies. What really brings the credibility down is the overly hostile reading of the letter by Bill Gates and the traditional Microsoft bashing through the entire production, combined with the heroic soundtrack during the interviews of the "good guys". It gives the over all impression of really being a sales pitch for a church from a bunch of overly enthusiastic believers, though without the visionary parts that can make it a document of its context of production.In conclusion, even though far between, there are some good bits in this documentary that could make it worth watching if you have a special interest in the open source movement. Just be aware that you might also get some chills of embarrassment in between.

My fourteen-year-old boy is very much into computers (that's hardly surprising). This summer he'll be back with the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth program studying - I don't really know exactly what. It's some kind of computer program, I just sign the check.He's very much both anti-Microsoft and anti-Bill Gates. He's also quite pro-Linux, the emblem of the "Open Source" movement whose adherents regard its underlying virtues with a devotion normally reserved by the religious for the icons of their faiths.So he wanted me to see "Revolution OS," a documentary about the Linux operating system and the open source movement that spawned the increasingly important competitor to both Microsoft and Apple.This is a very interesting documentary which I, clueless as to the secrets of operating systems, readily understood. I watched it with the barest comprehension of Linux or the philosophy underlying the open source concept.Much credit to the filmmaker for not only explaining the seminal value of open source - the commitment to free interchange of ideas with minimal incorporation of legal protection for intellectual property - but for also succinctly allowing contrasting values and competing personalities screen time. This documentary is a very concise but excellent guide for the uninitiated into a world usually the arcane preserve of specialists most adept at talking to each other.The Open Source movement is a work in progress threatened by the real risk of those benefiting from openness legally protecting their own "added value" and thus, in a sense, betraying their benefactors. Several of those interviewed pursue their open source values almost as a creed, the commitment to computers taking the place of more traditional dogma.Anyone interested in a major intellectual counterpoint to the dominance of both Microsoft and the role of law in insuring proprietary benefits for innovators should see "Revolution OS": no manual required.8/10.

"The Cathedral and the Bazaar" has become a modern classic, and I enjoyed the author's appearance. I'd never seen Stallman or Torvalds on the screen, either.Totally uninteresting, possibly even devastatingly horrible and excruciatingly boring, to anyone who hasn't spent some time using and writing free software. Most of target audience probably lives in the Valley, plus a few exclusive pockets of geekdom in major cities throughout the world. You know who you are, hang your heads in shame while you watch.

Revolution OS is an historical document about the free software movement, which renamed itself open software and was able to raise a lot of money from investors who believed there was a difference. The main beneficiary, VA Linux Inc, had a spectacular IPO (its stock jumped from 30 to 250 on opening day and its CEO exclaims that he can't believe this is happening. It didn't really. As the closing credits start to roll, we find that the stock subsequently dropped to 2 and that VA Linux (now VA Software) has quit the Linux business. It would have been interesting to have watched their slide down, but the film makers apparently ran out of money too.