See also: last week's Linux History page.

This week in Linux history

The penguin logo was offically adopted at this time as well. After five years, it seems like Tux has been around forever.

Three years ago (June 11, 1998 LWN): yes, it's been three years since the infamous John Dodge article, one of the classic examples of early-day ZDNet FUD:

First, let me say that I am uniquely unqualified to write about this week's topic. Like most of you, I've never used Linux....

Yes, the Linux camp, like a fat, speedy penguin, is making noise. However, some of the 25 letters I've gotten on Linux simply refer to it as a Windows alternative, not something they worship or even use.... Linux has a snowball's chance in hell of making perceptible inroads against Windows. And Torvalds left UHel last year for the commercial world.

"Uniquely unqualified" indeed.

Adaptec finally saw the light, and started providing programming information for its controllers to the Linux community.

The long-awaited GIMP 1.0 release happened, finally. GNOME 0.2 was also released.

Two years ago: (June 10, 1999 LWN): Red Hat filed for its initial public offering of stock - the first of (shorter than expected) series of Linux IPOs. LWN's analysis of the IPO filing is still available; it is interesting to see how things have changed. Somehow "my.redhat.com" never did seem like a winner...

But the mere fact that there is now an official SEC document that includes the text of the GPL serves as fairly astonishing proof that the rules of the software business really are being rewritten.
-- Andrew Leonard, Salon.

The Debian Project chose its new logo, after a long process involving a great many proposals. Debian also officially adopted the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

One year ago (June 8, 2000 LWN): Richard Stallman went on the attack against Open Motif and its not-really-free license.

Their announcement says they have released Motif to "the open source community", but this is true only in an unnatural interpretation of the words. They have not made Motif available within the free software community; instead, they have invited the people in the free software community to leave the community by using Motif.

One year later, the non-free license remains.

Plan 9, meanwhile, was released under a not-quite-free license.

Linux-Mandrake 7.1 was released.

Turbolinux had its first big round of layoffs, at the same time that it was paying founders Cliff and Iris Miller over $8 million to leave the company.

Remember how people were talking about Eazel a year ago?

When is a startup more than a startup? When that startup is kissed with the golden glow of success long before it retains a public relations firm or the first PowerPoint presentation is drafted. What does such a firm look like? It might have $13 million in startup funding based on a handful of phone calls. It might have some of the most talented programmers the world has produced to date. It might have the kind of seasoned management, with a little gray at the temples, that makes venture capitalists nod sagely and move along to the next and more troublesome funding project.

Things sure did look different back then...

Ah yes, it has now been one year since the antitrust judgement against Microsoft. Not much has changed on that front either....

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

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