LWN: 2000 Linux timeline

October, 2000

Corel currently plays an important role in Linux. Many other Linux companies look to it for its skills, tool sets and the work it does on key Linux committees. Therefore, Corel can be a valuable ally for Microsoft in Linux, allowing Microsoft to influence key questions, such as how the user interface, setup and deployment will look and function.
-- The Meta Group, via News.com.

Microsoft buys almost 25% of Corel, to get Corel's support on .NET. The future of Corel's Linux work is thrown in doubt.

Tuxtops releases a laptop Debian distribution (announcement here). The release is available separately or as part of a Tuxtops laptop system.

SOT moves into the U.S.. SOT, the Finnish publisher of Best Linux, announced the opening of its first U.S. office.

Atipa acquires the OpenNMS project (announcement here). This project, striving to take over the network management space, is to become part of Atipa's enterprise strategy.

VA Linux Systems hires Wichert Akkerman, the leader of the Debian Project, as part of its move into Europe.

There is a general consensus that the KDE project, despite its technical superiority among various desktop environments, has had a poor PR record, especially in North America.
-- KDE discovers PR

Scyld Computing releases Beowulf 2 (announcement here). Scyld was founded by Donald Becker, creator of the first Beowulf cluster.

CERT opens up a little. The Computer Emergency Response Team, famous for holding onto security information until it was too late, announced a change in policy that would let it send out alerts a little sooner.
It has come to our attention that some GNU/Linux distributions are currently shipping with ``GCC 2.96''. We would like to point out that GCC 2.96 is not a formal GCC release nor will there ever be such a release. Rather, GCC 2.96 has been the code- name for our development branch that will eventually become GCC 3.0.
-- The GCC steering committee on Red Hat 7's compiler.

Debian tries to dump non-free, but a vote on the issue is cancelled for procedural reasons, and the issue fades away.

PostgreSQL hackers Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane and Jan Wieck go to work for Great Bridge, where they will be part of an effort to turn PostgreSQL into a profitable product (announcement here.

KDE wins the Linux Community Award at The LinuxWorld Expo in Frankfurt, Germany.

Semyon Varshavchik wins a judgement against E*Trade as a result of his being excluded from Red Hat's initial public offering in 1999.

The Free Standards Group releases the Linux Development Platform Specification, a stopgap effort on the way toward the full Linux Standard Base. (Specification here).

SAP announces that it will release its relational database under the GPL. Development is to be centered around sapdb.org.

Vita Nuova releases a packaged version of Plan 9. This will be the first commercial distribution of this operating system, which was only recently released under an open source license.

EBIZ and LinuxMall.com finalize their merger several months after its initial announcement.

Turbolinux receives $30 million in venture funding from a list of companies including Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, SGI, Dell, and Intel.

The StarOffice source hits the net at OpenOffice.org. It consists of 35,000 files in 2,100 directories, and few comments (and many of those in German). The KDE project immediately starts looking for useful pieces to carve out to help KOffice.

Is it just me or does this seem a like putting 450 rugged individualists on a ship and launching them to sea, while we stand on the dock waving our Linux flags -- never expecting to see them again? More casualties of war and adventure. I hope they at least have fun.
I will repeat what I said when Netscape launched its public-source Mozilla.org effort for Communicator 6: This is a desperation play. Commercial software doesn't become free software until the vendor has determined the market won't support a real development effort.
-- ZDNet is unimpressed with the OpenOffice release.
Turbolinux Workstation Pro 6.1 ships; it includes an IA-64 version which is, according to the company, the first commercial IA-64 Linux distribution.

Larry Wall gives the keynote speech at the Atlanta Linux Showcase (slides here). This event will be the last Atlanta Linux Showcase; starting in 2001 the conference will hit the road, with the next one being in Oakland.

Python 2.0 is released (announcement here).

Ajuba Solutions is acquired by Interwoven. Ajuba was the home of Tcl development, while Interwoven has no interest in Tcl. Result: Ajuba stops doing Tcl and its products are discontinued. Fortunately the groundwork had been laid for the transfer of control of Tcl to the Tcl Core Team.

KDE 2.0 is released after a last-minute, one-week delay to fix some final problems (announcement here).

Microsoft says that penguins can mutate in a European Print ad which quickly becomes famous.

Mountain View Data announces its existence. This company is founded by Turbolinux founders Cliff and Iris Miller, and filesystem hacker Peter Braam; it will provide open source filesystems and managed storage services.

You'll find that open-source developers are eager to welcome HP to the fold, and can be extremely valuable allies in growing your markets and increasing your product value. But you'll also find that we're rather cynical about ringing endorsements; we've heard those before without result, and they won't earn you a lot of cred by themselves without actions and commitments that back them up.
-- Eric Raymond's open letter to HP CEO Carly Fiorina
LynuxWorks files for an IPO (LWN writeup here).

OpenBSD turns five on October 18.

The Python team moves again, this time to Digital Creations. Here is Guido van Rossum's announcement of the move; see also our talk with Guido as well as our interview with Digital Creations CEO Paul Everitt.

Turbolinux files for its IPO (LWN writeup here).

Linuxcare reappoints founder Art Tyde as CEO, ending its period with brand-name, IPO-oriented management. The company also closes down its European operations, laying off numerous people.
This has no _known_ bugs that I consider show-stoppers, for what it's worth. And when I don't know of a bug, it doesn't exist. Let us rejoice. In traditional kernel naming tradition, this kernel hereby gets anointed as one of the 'greased weasel' kernel series, one of the final steps in a stable release.
-- Linus releases 2.4.0-test10.

Progeny Linux Systems ships its first beta distribution, based, of course, on the Debian "woody" development release (announcement here).

Linux-Mandrake 7.2 ships (announcement here).

The GNOME Foundation election begins with a list of 33 candidates from which eleven are to be chosen.

Red Hat founder Bob Young joins the Tucows board of directors.

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