See also: last week's Linux History page.

This week in Linux history

Three years ago (July 23, 1998 LWN): Oracle announced support for Linux. Computer Associates (Ingres) and Informix had announced Linux support earlier in the year. This ZDNet article echoed some common sentiments:

A Linux evangelist said a port of an enterprise-size database such as Oracle would help lend credibility to Linux in the eyes of business managers.

Linus made clear his position that 4MB machines would no longer be a development priority or interest for the 2.1.X development tree. Nowadays, finding a PC with only 4MB of memory might be difficult. Even projects such as TINY Linux, which is designed especially for old, recycled computers, requires at least 8MB (but still supports the i386 chip).

The release of perl 5.005 was imminent. Perl 5.7.2 has just been released.

Two years ago (July 22, 1999 LWN): The biggest news was Red Hat's announcement of a community stock offering. Some viewed it with suspicion; an effort to get more people to buy stock and drive up the price or maybe just spam from an unexpected source. In addition, the list of people Red Hat put together accidently left off a lot of important contributors.

Nonetheless, in the long run, a lot of people made a little bit of unexpected money as a result and the offering set a precedent for including the community that was later followed by the VA Linux and Caldera IPOs. None of them went perfectly or smoothly, but again, at least some people got an unexpected bonus for the work they had done gratis for so long.

On a slightly different note, Red Hat unveiled more of its IPO plans, including a major investment in developing their 'web portal'. Plans included the hiring of over 20 people, setting up their own news service and much more. Of course, nowadays that has gone by the wayside and Red Hat is looking in much different fields (such as embedded Linux) for new revenue models.

Caldera Thin Clients reinvented itself as Lineo.

One year ago (July 20, 2000 LWN): Miguel de Icaza gave his "Unix sucks" speech at the Ottawa Linux Symposium.

Sun announced that StarOffice would be released under the GPL.

SCO released flagging financial results, creating rumors of how Linux might save the failing UnixWare business. Forbes noted that SCO had been selling support services for Caldera and TurboLinux, but inaccurately predicted that the company would strike a deal with MandrakeSoft. This article in OSOpinion speculated:

The most likely scenario seems to have SCO spinning off Tarantella (probably as an immediate acquisition target), and looking for a Linux vendor to merge with the rest. If they could find some more VC cash, I think that TurboLinux could be a fairly straightforward candidate, as they could hone their focus in on Linux clustering, already their strongest point and a very promising market niche.

ZDNet had better inside information as this article accurately predicted:

Caldera Systems, a leading Linux distributor, is on the verge of buying SCO's Server--aka, Unix--division for a price expected to be north of $70 million in stock, according to multiple sources claiming familiarity with terms of the deal in progress.

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol.

LWN Linux Timelines
1998 In Review
1999 In Review
2000 In Review
2001 In Review

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