Open source may not be the big revolution any more than good books on Marxism and good adaptive technology in itself are the revolution. But like them, it has its moments. It's one of those things that you need to work with in order to see its benefits and potential.
For me it's more of an act of learning, that is also a form of resistance. Maybe I will make the argument a little stronger here. Learning, working with, and using this kind of system is pretty much like learning and working with any subject that bares on how the human world is put together. It has a technical and an social-economic dimension.
The resistance part is a little more difficult to explain, but it is definitely there. I am trying to think of a metaphor to explain it.
(I intent `writing' to mean what second and third graders mean. Just the mechanics.)
Let's say everybody is taught how to read, but very few, under very privileged circumstances are taught how to write. Those who read are accustom to just reading. So what? Some of those who know how to write try to explain how to write in writing so those who only know how to read, can learn how to write. The writers idea was to somehow get around the privilages they were granted. And besides the writer world was getting pretty lonely.
A lot of the read-only types read the writing about how to write out of curiosity. But after a couple of pages, it was too difficult to follow the explanations. ``Okay, so you can make these funny looking letters one at a time by hand. Yeah, and...then?'' they wonder.
Now a debate arises between those who know how to read, and those who are learning to write. ``What's the big deal the readers want to know?'' The neophyte writers struggling along with their work on their own try to explain.
``Once you learn how to write, you can....I don't know...do more stuff'', they admit in defeat. The reader-onlies swell with victory, ``See, I told you it wasn't worth all that work for nothing! If you think you can change the world by writing. You're an idiot.''
The writer-wanttabys sulk off to continue their efforts, grumbling about the know-nothing readers. ``Suckers, dumb fucks, ass licks... Maybe they're right. But somebody, someday, is going to do just that...''
So that's the social-political dimension.
The real world economic dimension is pretty threatening to US capital heavily invested in software. If they can not control the software they produce, they are in serious trouble. And that is beginning to happen. Europe and Asia are not going to be held hostage to the likes of Microsoft and US based software companies. So there is a tremendous battle going on to push open source all over the non-US world.
True it is a battle between capitalists, but it has a spin off effect. The uncontrolled and distributed learning of this `stuff' will always be a threat to whoever tries to control and manage development---if they base critical parts of their economic interest on that control.
CG