At the meeting on October 21st John Moore presented the first of two DVD's in the newly released "Revolution OS" by J.T.S. Moore (no relation). This fascinating documentary recounts the evolution of Linux from Dennis Richie's creation of Unix in Bell Labs in 1991 through the meteoric rise and crash of Larry Augustin's VA-Linux and Eric Raymond's seminal book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" to nearly the present. All of the major players are there, including of course, a lot on Linux Torvalds. The puts together in a comprehensive and coherent way what most of us have bits and pieces of in our minds and experience. Especially interesting are the discussions by Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond of the philosophy of Open Source and why "Free" software is a misleading characterization of Open Source.

The DVD can be purchased from www.Amazon.com for about $25.00 (including shipping). Check out www.revolution-os.com to see excerpts from the film and other links for purchase, etc.

John also prepared a handout with links to the home pages of most of the participants in the film as well as a couple of recent articles including Wired Magazine's current issue on the Open Source Movement which features Linus but expands the subject to the broader realm of people helping each other such as Amish barn raisings, the SETI project, the Genome project, etc. He promised to post his handout on our web site ASAP.