Reaction Paper: Revolution OS

            The documentary is about the history of GNU, Linux, and the open source and free software movements. It features different people concerning Gnu, Linux, Open Source and Free Software Movements like Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf. They all become a part of what we had right now especially in Open Source technology.

            Based on the documentary, Open Source is  a way for people to collaborate on software without having problems with intellectual property, having to negotiate contracts every time you buy a piece of software, have a lot of lawyers involved. In general, Open Source wants to make the software to work, and to be able to have people to contribute fixes to that software, so they sort of sacrifice the intellectual property rights and just let the whole world use the software.

Upon watching the documentary, I think it’s easy to notice that the guy named Richard Stallman is quite a good guy. He is the guy who wants to have changes in the software industry that is being run by large proprietors. Richard Stallman I think is against the idea of intellectual property rights. He said that during their time if people want to use a pc you need an operating system, and large proprietor of operating system by that time didn’t share it with other people, instead they try to control the users, dominate the users, and restrict them. They told users that if he/she wants to get to get the system, he/she needs to sign a promise that he/she won’t share it with nobody else. And for Richard Stallman that was essentially a promise to be a bad person, to betray the rest of the world, cut himself off from society from a cooperating community, he felt that, that is wrong. He felt hostility about the idea of intellectual property. He felt that there has been a moral dilemma going on in the industry. And because of that he founded the Free Software Foundation.

I think Richard Stallman is right about his thoughts. With that intellectual property rights, proprietors will have the ability to control the people buying those systems. I think once a buyer gets the item that he wants; he has the decision on whether to keep it to himself or to share it with others. I do believe that Stallman is right because without the intellectual property rights computer users will have the freedom to form a community where in everybody can help on another to develop or enhance a software that will suit every computer users need which will be beneficial to everyone.

Since Stallman himself is an operating system developer, he decided to develop an operating system that would be available to all computer users and are allowed to share to everyone. In that case they use the idea of copyleft. Copyleft is the one where authors give permission to copy, to change some but when you distribute it, it has to be under the terms so whoever you shared it with also gets the freedom to cooperate with other people if he wants to. With that Microsoft Windows find themselves a pretty decent competition with GNU.

I honestly believe that Stallman is indeed a man of good character. With his talents he could be anything he wants himself to be in the software business. He could earn a lot of money with his talents without thinking about others. Instead he think about the community and how people can help each other in order to create a better computer community. He is a good man.