LWN: 2001 Linux timeline

April, 2001

I'm not omniscient, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. This job of playing God is a little too big for me. Nevertheless, someone has to do it, so I'll try my best to fake it. And I'll expect all of you to help me out with the process of creating history. We all have to do our bit with free will.
-- Larry Wall begins revealing the Perl 6 design.

Wind River Systems acquires BSDi (announcement)

The Adore worm attacks Linux systems, once again, only systems with ancient vulnerabilities are threatened. The unrelated Adore kernel module, which can hide a worm's tracks, also turns up.

GNOME 1.4 is released (announcement).

Atipa sells its Linux hardware division to Microtech (announcement).

This is completely unprecedented. A company launching and aggressive marketing campaign for a product that it has no claim over and for which it cannot obtain even one cent in direct revenues.
-- IT-Director on IBM.
Libranet starts charging for Linux downloads.

The SourceXchange shuts down ending another experiment in funding free software development.

Progeny Linux, first edition, ships. Unfortunately it was the last edition as well. [MontaVista]

Hard Hat Linux 2.0 is released by MontaVista Software (announcement).

The GNOME User and Developer User Conference is held in Copenhagen (summary).

Eazel announces "Reef", a "next-generation architecture for delivering online services" (announcement).

Apache 2.0 beta is released (announcement).
Slackware has always made money (who else producing a commercial distribution can say that?) but with BSDi, we ended up strapped to a sinking ship.
-- Patrick Volkerding

Loki Software loses much of its technical staff.

Zero-copy networking is merged into the "stable" 2.4.4 kernel.

Wind River Systems lays off the Slackware developers it acquired with BSDi.

Python 2.1 is released (announcement).

MandrakeSoft sets up a donations page, in the hope of getting revenue from its users (donate here).

Red Hat Linux 7.1 is released (announcement).

VA Linux Systems hires Andrew Tridgell and Jeremy Allison as part of its NAS group (announcement).

Unfortunately, the disclosure that you are contemplating could result in significantly broader consequences and could directly lead to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Such disclosure is not authorized in the Agreement, would constitute a violation of the Agreement and would subject your research team to enforcement actions under the DMCA and possibly other federal laws.
-- The SDMI gets nasty.
Samba 2.2.0 is released (announcement).

IDC predicts that the Linux multiuser system market will be $4.1 billion in 2004 - ten times its 1999 level (announcement).

The SDMI threatens Edward Felten with legal action if he reveals how he broke the SDMI watermarking scheme.

Mandrake Linux 8.0 is released (announcement).

Caldera lays off 17% of its staff (SEC filing). [Ximian]

IBM gets into trouble over its "Peace, Love, and Linux" graffiti in several cities.

Ximian launches its Red Carpet service (announcement).

VA Linux warns of another bad quarter - around $18 million, well below an (already lowered) estimate of $30 million (announcement).

Jason Haas resigns from LinuxPPC, and retires from the computer world (resignation letter).

Sony announces a Linux kit for the Playstation 2 to be shipped in Japan in May.

SAP releases its database as open source.

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