Revolution OS

I watched Revolution OS during a period when I was reinstalling operating systems more often than any stable adult should.

Linux had turned my computer into a laboratory.

I would install a distribution, change something I barely understood, break the graphical environment, search for a solution, repair half the problem, create a new one and eventually decide that another installation was educational rather than evidence of poor judgment.

This was the state of mind in which the documentary found me.

I expected computer history.

I got an argument about freedom.

The film covers GNU, Linux, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and the movement around software whose source code could be studied, modified and redistributed. Until then I had mostly treated licenses as paperwork surrounding software.

The documentary made the paperwork philosophical.

Who may inspect the program?

Who may change it?

Who benefits from an improvement?

What does ownership mean when the object can be copied perfectly without removing the original from its owner?

These questions become less abstract the first time a program does something wrong and you can actually look behind the interface.

Access to source does not guarantee understanding. Often it guarantees a more sophisticated form of confusion.

Still, the possibility changes your relationship to the machine.

Closed software presents itself as an object: use me as I am.

Open source presents an invitation: this is how I work; if something bothers you enough, look.

I once spent an entire evening fixing a sound problem caused by a configuration change I had made myself. By midnight the speakers worked exactly as they had before I touched anything.

On paper, I had accomplished nothing.

In practice, I understood the system better.

This is one of the strange pleasures of technical learning. A day can end where it began and still contain progress.

The social model behind open source interested me just as much. Software can be shared without the original disappearing. If I give you a chair, I lose the chair. If I give you a copy of a program, we both have it.

That technical property permits unusual forms of collaboration.

A student can study code written by professionals.

A stranger can repair a bug affecting people on another continent.

A project can survive the organization that started it.

Of course, communities remain human. Open code does not create open-minded people automatically. There are arguments, abandoned projects, competing visions, tired maintainers and discussions whose emotional intensity seems disproportionate to the number of affected users.

Perhaps that makes the successful collaborations more impressive.

After watching Revolution OS, I returned to Linux with slightly more patience.

Not much more.

I still wanted the sound card to work.

But the operating system no longer felt like a sealed product on my desk. It felt like the visible surface of a conversation carried out through code by people who might never meet.

Then I edited another configuration file.

The machine stopped booting properly.

Freedom has consequences.