LWN: 2000 Linux timeline

June, 2000

Commercial considerations help prompt the re-licensing of MySQL under the GPL. Now the two freely available databases that are widely used in the Linux and free software community, PostgreSQL and MySQL, meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines and the Open Source Guidelines. In addition, Progress Software forms a new company, NuSphere, just for the purpose of supporting MySQL.

I was dumbfounded to discover that installing Linux was easy. Why? Well, the world has changed. No more do you have to understand everything about Linux before you install it, downloading the many chunks of code necessary to run a complete system and getting them all to work together. That was BSW--before shrink-wrap. With companies such as Red Hat and Corel putting all the software you need in a box, the pain is (nearly) gone.
-- John Schwartz in this column for the Washington Post
Lutris.com announces the release of the Enhydra Enterprise source code to the Open Source community. Lutris.com previously released the base Enhydra server code under a FreeBSD-style license. Enhydra Enterprise is being released under the EPL, derived from Mozilla Public License. Enhydra is a Java/XML application server.

Plan 9 is released under an open source license. Plan 9 is a longstanding project by Rob Pike and others to develop a "beyond Unix" operating system. Many have seen it as the "next great thing" from Bell Labs for years, but in the past the system has been slow to develop (the third release has just come out, the second was in 1995) and hard to come by.

Franz, Inc. announces the release of its AllegroServe web server under the LGPL. Franz, Inc. is a longtime providers of LISP implementations.

Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents. I have asked for the specific patent numbers, since I find patenting a file format a bit strange. At his request, and much to my own sadness, I have removed support for ASF in VirtualDub 1.3d, since I cannot risk a legal confrontation.
-- Avery Lee, author of VirtualDub
Microsoft asserts a patent on a file format. VirtualDub has removed support for the Active Stream Format (ASF) at Microsoft's request. VirtualDub is a GPL'ed video capture and processing program. Microsoft has a patent on the Active Stream Format format, and apparently wasn't pleased with the existence of a free implementation.

The creation of a petition against the implementation of software patents in Europe is announced (in English and in French) by the Eurolinux Alliance of European software companies and Open Source associations.

The Microsoft antitrust judgment is in. It offers no real surprises, stating that Microsoft is to be split into two companies. One company would concern itself with operating systems, the other with applications. Those who are interested can read the full text of the final judgment, and the memorandum that accompanies it.

The OpenEDA.org web site, intended to host the EDA open source community, is launched.

The Rock Linux BOF at SANE 2000 in Maastricht, The Netherlands apparently took the prize for longest BOF, running from 4 PM Wednesday to noon on Thursday.

Compaq (in the form of Jim Gettys) announces the creation of Handhelds.org as a focal point for the development of free software operating systems on handheld computers.

Gnucash 1.4 is announced. This is the first stable release based on GNOME, and is probably the first that is suitable for a wide range of users.

Bastille Linux 1.1 is released (home page here).

Digital Creations announces it will add Perl scripting to Zope, in cooperation with ActiveState.

The Linux Knowledge Base Organization has announces the formation of the Open Object Directory Services Group with the goal of creating a scalable, modular, distributed directory service built upon CORBA.

Jailbait is a new "fully functional" distribution that fits into 16MB of disk, based on work from the LEM project. Jailbait seems to have had the Netpliance iOpener in mind in its development.

While BSD folk write code just to 'get it out there,' and the open source movement (at least as expressed by Eric Raymond) advocates that its use makes economic sense, the GNU rationale is based mainly on righteousness. While others seem to value the merits of free software on practical merits or even pure self-interest, the people behind GNU say, when it comes down to it, this is a simple matter of right and wrong.
-- Evan Leibovitch writing about software licenses on ZDNet

Websprocket releases JEMIni, a free, open-source Java programming language for embedded networked systems.

BlueCat Linux release 2.0 is announced by LynuxWorks with a number of new features aimed at embedded systems applications.

Source code for Kimberlite is released under the GPL. Kimberlite is Mission Critical Linux's high-availability cluster technology>

Intel announces the open source release of its Common Open Policy Service (COPS) network configuration package under an open source license, and a computer vision library, which "will provide a wide range of functions, including gesture recognition, object-tracking, face recognition and camera calibration."

A new real-time Common API has been announced by Lineo Industrial Solutions Group. The API supports both the NMT RTLinux and DIPARM RTAI implementations of real-time Linux.

Quantum announces its new Ultra ATA/100 IDE interface. Thanks to the efforts of Andre Hedrick, Linux already has support for several ATA/100 chipsets well ahead of any number of well-known proprietary systems.

We see Linux as being as much of a fad as the Internet was in 1995. Linux is more like the Internet in being an industry-wide initiative that all vendors can support. That makes it very different from supporting Windows or other technology that's very good but that one vendor has all the control over.
-- Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM VP of technology and strategy in this interview for News.com.

IBM announces the donation of its SOAP implementation to the Apache Software Project. IBM is a member of the group which jointly proposed the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) in May, 2000.

Some folks at IBM post a Power4 boot log showing that Linux already runs on this under-development processor, despite the fact that commercial Power4 systems are not expected to be out there for another year.

IBM has posted a "RedBook" for Linux on the S/390. RedBooks are detailed documents aimed at IBM's serious customers - this one is 424 pages long.

IBM announces its Thinkpad laptops will soon be available with Caldera OpenLinux preinstalled. By December 21, 2000 IBM has only one of the three Thinkpad models offered with Caldera OpenLinux preinstalled in stock.

Red Hat launches its University program with the goal of encouraging/accelerating the use of Open Source software in the education environment. The initial action involved the donation of bundled software, such as the GNU Pro Dev Kits and Code Fusion packages, to several Universities.

Red Hat announces its results for the quarter ended May 31, 2000. Red Hat brought in $16 million in this quarter, with a loss of $2.5 million. Red Hat also files its 2000 annual report. It is now up to 435 employees.

Red Hat announces the completion of its acquisition of Bluecurve, Inc..

Dell announces that Linux is now its third "strategic, global operating system," along with Windows and NetWare. And the distribution of Linux that Dell will install will be Red Hat, according to a separate announcement about the Dell/Red Hat "One Source Alliance."

TCS announces the opening of a Linux Research and Development facility in Texas to develop "Linux-related technologies" for Dell Computer Corporation.

Corel successfully completed its sale of new common shares, guaranteeing it will stay afloat for at least some time longer. Corel also reported revenues for the quarter ended May 31, 2000 of $36.6 million, producing a net loss of $23.6 million.

Macmillan will be the exclusive retail distributor of the English version of the Linux-Mandrake operating system in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Indonesia under an agreement between Macmillan USA and MandrakeSoft.

Linux-Mandrake 7.1 is released (announcement here).

Lineo launches a new website, http://opensource.lineo.com, "dedicated to open source projects funded or maintained by Lineo and its employees".
Normally, when you integrate almost 5MB of patches, bad things happen. This time, a miracle occurred. As I uploaded the resultant kernel, a specter of the holy penguin appeared before me, and said "It is Good. It is Bugfree".
As if wanting to re-assure me that yes, it really =was= the holy penguin, it finally added "Do you have any Herring?" before fading out in a puff of holy penguin-smoke. Only a faint whiff of rancid fish remains as I type in these words..
In short, not only are most of Alan's patches integrated, I have it on higher authority that the result is perfect.
So if it doesn't compile for you, you must be doing something wrong.
-- Linus Torvalds' announcement of the 2.4.0-test2 release

VA Linux Systems announces the completion of its acquisition of Andover.Net.

LinuxWorld was pretty happy to announce that exhibit space is sold out for the event coming up in August in San Jose. Boasting an impressive 60% increase in exhibit floor space, clearly business oriented Linux conferences are a hit.

Gateway and America OnLine (AOL) announce that they will bring a family of new Internet Appliances (IA) to market based on Transmeta's Crusoe processor running Mobile Linux.

Conectiva announces the addition of Andrew Clausen to the Conectiva payroll. Andrew is an Australian developer, currently also a student at University of Melbourne, who is working on the GNU Parted project (partition editor).

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