LWN: 2000 Linux timeline

September, 2000

Also, where code was copied from other GPL-covered programs, their copyright holders need to be asked for forgiveness. To lead the way, the FSF hereby grants this forgiveness for all code that is copyright FSF. More precisely, those who as of September 4, 2000 have used some FSF code in violation of the GPL solely by linking it with Qt, and thus have forfeited the right to use that code under the GPL, will once again have full GPL permissions to use that code upon switching to a GPL-covered version of Qt. I appeal to all the other copyright holders of affected code to grant similar forgiveness and thus help resolve the situation quickly.
-- Richard Stallman, ending the situation less quickly than many would have liked.

Trolltech releases the Qt library under the GPL, putting a definitive end to a long-running and unpleasant license flamewar. (Announcement here).

The :CueCat fiasco begins. Digital Convergence attempts to shut down programmers who have written Linux drivers for its ":CueCat" barcode scanner. The company has given out large numbers of these scanners for free, expecting people to use them with its proprietary software and web site. The threats cause the drivers to become marginally harder to find for a short period, after which the company declares victory and moves on.

The TUX gets loose. TUX "Hawaii", the first public release of the kernel-based webserver that (as of this writing) holds the web serving speed record, is announced. It was followed, at the end of the month, by TUX 1.0, the first stable release.

Python 1.6 and 2.0b1 are released. Version 1.6 was the last to come out of CNRI, while 2.0 was to be the first (and last, as it turns out) to originate at BeOpen.

RSA Security Inc. releases the RSA encryption algorithm into the public domain (announcement here). This release might have seemed more generous had RSA not exploited the patent for two decades and released it less than three weeks before its expiration.

MontaVista announces a preemptable Linux kernel, and claims to have the first such kernel. Both Lineo and FSM Labs (RTLinux) disagree...

I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work if it just results in what I consider to be a better system.
-- Linus Torvalds tries to change his image.
SmoothWall hits the net. SmoothWall is a specialized Linux distribution aimed at firewalling tasks; it fits within a single 18MB ISO image.

NewsForge hits the net; NewsForge is a new open source news site run by VA Linux Systems.

Sun purchases Cobalt Networks in a deal valued at about $2 billion.

Caldera Systems invests $3 million in EBIZ; the investment takes the form of the transfer of Caldera's "Electronic Linux Marketplace" division to EBIZ.

MontaVista Software receives a $23 million investment from W.R. Hambrecht and others.

Linux-Mandrake Corporate Server 1.0 is released (announcement here).

Debian drops security support for 2.1 shortly after the release of Debian 2.2.

The Secure Digital Music Initiative holds a cracking contest to test out its music copy protection scheme. Numerous members of the free software and cyber rights movements call for a boycott of the challenge.

Linux Journal goes embedded. The Linux Journal, aiming to get into the embedded arena, announces the publication of the Embedded Linux Journal, a new, controlled-circulation print magazine.

Linus Torvalds declares that there are no major known bugs in the 2.4.0-test kernel series. He decrees that only patches which fix a critical problem will be accepted. "So when you send me a patch, either bug Ted to mark the issue as 'critical' first, or pay me money. It's that easy." Some hackers decide that bribing TODO list maintainer Ted Ts'o with exotic liquor is a better way to go.

TimeSys announces its own preemptive kernel for real-time applications (announcement here).

Raph Levien takes over as the maintainer of ghostscript, taking the torch from L. Peter Deutsch.

Kuro5hin returns to the net after a two-month absence.

The Red Hat Network launches (announcement here). The Network is Red Hat's latest attempt in the support arena. Along with that, of course, came the other announcement from Red Hat...
I don't know why RH decided to do their idiotic gcc-2.96 release (it certainly wasn't approved by any technical gcc people - the gcc people were upset about it too), and I find it even more surprising that they apparently KNEW that the compiler they were using was completely broken.
-- Linus Torvalds on Red Hat 7

Red Hat 7 is released (announcement here). This release, which dropped the ".0" suffix, was controversial due to its use of a CVS snapshot version of the gcc compiler.

Lineo releases Embedix Realtime 3.0, a software development environment for embedded applications (announcement here).

The Tcl project formalizes the Tcl Core Team and its development structure in general. It wasn't yet clear that the world was about to change for the Tcl development community...

NuSphere launches its MySQL distribution.

The Embedded Systems Conference is held in San Jose (LWN coverage here).

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