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I just got finished watching Revolution OS, which is a documentary on GNU, Linux, Open Source, Free Software, etc. It was a very interesting movie, consisting mostly of interviews with Stallman, Torvalds, Eric Raymond, and a number of others. I think it did a fairly good job of explaining what open source is, I think most people could watch it and get a decent understanding of the topic. (Even if they are not programmers, etc)

One pretty humorous part was when the film was discussing the open letter from Bill Gates to the homebrew computer club they had this woman read the letter in this really super mean voice... it came across as pretty silly. The movie does go to great lengths to vilify Microsoft, so if things like that upset you, you should probably not watch.

One interesting thing is seeing how Stallman is constantly fighting against the perception that Linux is more important than GNU. He is constantly trying to remind people that Linux was built with parts of GNU and contains parts of GNU. He even gets up during Linux world and is telling everyone there they should call it GNU Linux or something like that.

Another interesting part of the film is when the interviewer asks each of them what their response to parallels being drawn between open source and communism... Eric Raymond gets pretty passionate about it. :) I have been thinking about this lately and plan to post on the topic again when I have thought about it more and done more research.

All in all it is an interesting movie and you should check it out if you are interested in learning more about how open source was born.

-James