open source

Code Rush is a 2000 PBS documentary following Netscape engineers during the year they open-sourced the browser as Mozilla. It shows the pressure and long hours of work in Silicon Valley at the height of the dot-com era.

Code Rush is a one-hour documentary following Netscape engineers in Silicon Valley through the company's last year as an independent firm. It covers the Mozilla open-source announcement, the frantic push to ready the source for release by March 31, 1998, and the toll on engineers' lives before the AOL acquisition.

Revolution OS is a feature-length documentary on the history of free software and Linux. It covers Stallman and the GNU project, Torvalds and the kernel, and Raymond and Perens on open source, starting from the era of freely shared hobbyist code.

The official Kubernetes documentary, part 1, tells how a handful of Google engineers, inspired by Docker's success, built a container orchestrator. It covers the internal resistance to open source and the competition of the container orchestrator wars.

Veritasium tells the story of the XZ backdoor, how a patient attacker became maintainer and nearly compromised SSH on Linux systems. It also covers free software history and how encryption in SSH works.

The full documentary 'The Internet's Own Boy' about programmer and activist Aaron Swartz, with interviews with family, friends and internet figures. It covers his work on access to information and the legal case preceding his death.

A documentary on how GraphQL came to be at Facebook, featuring its co-creators Lee Byron, Dan Schafer and Nick Schrock. It covers the problems it solved and its adoption at companies like Twitter, Airbnb and GitHub.

An animated short on limits to growth, covering oil formation, peak oil, energy, economic growth and resource depletion. Its central section deals with exponential growth, and the author notes some statistics are dated.

A Noclip Greatest Hits documentary on the legacy of RollerCoaster Tycoon, covering its original design, Chris Sawyer and the OpenRCT2 community that keeps it alive.

Jason Scott's multi-episode documentary on the bulletin board system scene of the 1980s and 1990s, built from over 200 interviews. It captures how hobbyists ran dial-up systems before the internet went mainstream.

A 41-minute factory tour showing how the BMW i3 electric car is built from start to finish, in the style of a Megafactories documentary. It shows a highly automated production line with carbon-fiber body construction and robots doing most of the work.

Adam Curtis' multi-part documentary on how Freud's ideas and Edward Bernays' public relations shaped consumer culture and political control. It argues that business and government learned to manufacture desires.

Alain de Botton's 2004 documentary based on his book Status Anxiety, running over two hours. It asks why people in rich societies are still unhappy, and examines how worries about success, snobbery and meritocracy drive that anxiety.

A 1982 Bell Labs film hosted by Victor Vyssotsky on the origins and design philosophy of the UNIX operating system, with appearances by Kernighan, Thompson and Ritchie. It shows pipes, filters and a shell one-liner spell checker being built.

A one-hour 2019 KOMO News documentary hosted by Eric Johnson on Seattle's homelessness and drug crisis, with interviews and looks at proposed solutions including a drug court program in Rhode Island. It argues addiction and mental illness are at the core of the problem.

Dan Olson's roughly two-hour video essay critiques NFTs, cryptocurrency, and Web3, covering their technical, economic, and ideological flaws. It is heavily sourced and ends with the advice to ask whether a project needs crypto to work.

Official trailer for Eugene Jarecki's 2012 documentary The House I Live In, an investigative look at America's war on drugs and its effect on the criminal justice system. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

The first episode of CuriousMarc's series restoring a real Apollo Guidance Computer, led by AGC expert Mike Stewart. They set up a makeshift lab in a Houston hotel room to open up a rare machine owned by a private collector.

An hour-long, carefully sourced video essay from Ahoy asking what counts as a video game and which one was truly first. It examines Tennis for Two, Spacewar, Pong, the Brown Box and a 1947 CRT device.

A 1945 US Army educational film that dramatizes how demagogues use prejudice and scapegoating to divide people. It opens with fake wrestling matches and crooked gambling games to show how con artists work, then applies the lesson to racial and religious bigotry.

Vice founder Shane Smith travels to North Korea, speaking with refugees in South Korea before crossing the DMZ. It is part one of a three-part documentary with rare on-the-ground footage.

A 98-minute LEMMiNO video reconstructing what happened inside the Texas School Book Depository before, during, and after the Kennedy assassination. It draws on testimony to map people's movements and discrepancies.

The first part of a long two-part video series by historian Sean Munger arguing, with citations, that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy and acted alone. It goes through the provable historical facts and addresses conspiracy theories.

A documentary following Robert Zubrin and the Mars Society as they push the Mars Direct plan for sending humans to Mars using current technology and local resources. It also covers the clash with NASA's more expensive approach.

A 69-minute documentary on the Polybius arcade-game legend. It examines visual, physical and anecdotal evidence, traces the story's source, and concludes the game never existed beyond one website entry.

A 1987 episode of The Computer Chronicles on Apple's HyperCard, showing users building their own applications. Gary Kildall appears and Bill Atkinson discusses the program, with credit given to earlier influences.

A 1957 Walt Disney film in which he explains and demonstrates the multiplane camera, the animation tool that gave 2D films depth. It is a short behind-the-scenes piece from Disney's archives.

Strange Parts builds a working refurbished iPhone 6S entirely from components bought in the Huaqiangbei phone parts markets in Shenzhen. The video explains how the markets work and what the parts cost.

Summoning Salt's roughly two-hour documentary traces the history of Tetris world records, from early play through the modern competitive scene. It is a long, well-researched narrative about the players and techniques that pushed the records.

A FRONTLINE documentary on whether efforts to fix plastic pollution made it worse. It looks at the battle over plastics and recycling and how little plastic is actually recycled.

The official trailer for The True Cost, a documentary on the fast fashion industry and who pays for cheap clothing. It touches on garment worker conditions and the Rana Plaza collapse.

A Bloomberg documentary on how Boeing's failures around the 737 Max crashes followed a shift in company culture and cost-cutting. It covers the grounding, the stock drop and questions about the company's future.

The 1966 film Walt Disney recorded weeks before his death, laying out his plans for the Florida Project and especially EPCOT, a planned city of the future. It uses models, concept art and animation to describe the circular city, monorails and people movers.

An Empire Files documentary by Abby Martin presenting a critical account of the Afghanistan War, from the CIA's role in the 1980s to the stalemate of the 2010s and 2020. It argues the war was driven by imperial interests.

A dramatization of a hypothetical Soviet first strike that destroys US bombers and Minuteman missiles, filmed with US Air Force cooperation. It is a short version of the 1979 documentary First Strike.

A New York Times Op-Doc by Laura Poitras profiling William Binney, a 32-year NSA veteran who helped design a secret program he says collects Americans' personal data.