See also: last week's Linux History page.

This week in Linux history

There are probably now in excess of a million so called 'software patents' cripping US industry. Because the US patent system basically runs without any checking of any kind US companies file patents on anything that so much as compiles in the hope they can use it to monopolise a field and drive competitors bankrupt.

Software patent problems are not limited the United States. Later in this page we will see an attempt to battle them and a specific example.

ZDNet's Jesse Berst wrote:

Would you like to see the rug pulled out from under Microsoft? Here's how it could happen. IBM ships and supports Linux. Oracle does Linux versions of all its products. A consortium of top vendors picks a standard Linux interface and creates a compatibility logo.

When IBM announced plans to bundle and support Apache during the same week, it seemed like the corners of the rug had been tugged. These days Linux has IBM support and Oracle support. If you allow for a choice of two desktops as a standard interface then Linux has that too. And the compatibility logo? One should certainly be part of the imminent Linux Standard Base 1.0 release...

Debian 2.0 went into beta.

Two years ago (June 24, 1999 LWN): SuSE's financial results through March 31, 1999 showed revenues just under $10 million with 130 employees. In comparison, Red Hat's recent SEC filing reported just under $11 million and 127 employees. The common perception that Red Hat was the biggest distributor was shattered. SuSE was just as big. Unfortunately, SuSE does not release its numbers, so there is no easy way to determine the relative sizes of the two companies now.

Eric Raymond spoke at Microsoft.

Matt Michie wrote an editorial titled "Microsoft and the Art of War." It's tries to predict how Microsoft might respond to Linux and free software in general.

Just when Microsoft thought that Unix was finally dead and buried, all these free *NIX clones spring into popularity over the Internet. Standard MS stratagems are enacted and FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) was spread through their standard trade press channels....

Microsoft then moved on to the next phase. We're all now familiar with the so called Mindcraft Fiasco. ...

Microsoft seems to be moving backwards in that they are once again attempting to spread FUD. Are more benchmark tests coming?

Ten European industry leaders, including Linus Torvalds, raised concerns about software patents.

The GNU COBOL project was born after Rildo Pragana released the source code for an old COBOL compiler he had created for MSDOS. The project, now TinyCOBOL, is still working.

Bob Metcalfe predicted the death of Linux and "The Open Sores Movement".

Why do I think Linux won't kill Windows? Two reasons. The Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash. And Linux is 30-year-old technology. The Open Source Movement reminds me of communism. Richard Stallman's Marx rants about the evils of the profit motive and multinational corporations. Linus Torvalds' Lenin laughs about world domination.

This UserFriendly cartoon for June 10, 2001 proves that a good quote never dies.

One year ago (June 22, 2000 LWN):

Compaq's Jim Gettys announced the creation of Handhelds.org. Compaq continues to support the development of handheld devices. See this week's Commerce page.

The kernel hackers were busily trying to fix the 2.4 virtual memory subsystem. A year later...they're still trying...

The Direct Access File System (DAFS) was announced this week. DAFS Collaborative web site. The DAFS Collaborative just demonstrated its first prototype this week.

LynuxWorks released BlueCat Linux 2.0. Also released were OpenBSD 2.7, Immunix 6.2, and SuSE 7.1 beta 1.

Red Hat's first quarter results showed revenues of $16 million with a $2.5 million loss. One year later, revenue is up substantially, and the loss is gone.

Jesse Berst wrote:

Penguins throw down your arms. The Linux battle for the desktop is a fruitless waste of time....

Message to the Linux counterculture: Expecting consumers to abandon the de facto Windows standard to go to Linux is like asking them to return to DOS. It's not going to happen. But Linux can succeed if it does two things successfully: gets big (becomes a popular choice for large enterprises) and gets small (becomes embedded OS of choice for small devices).

These days Linux is a popular choice for large enterprises and popular in the embedded space too. The "battle for the desktop" doesn't seem quite so "fruitless" anymore either. It's no wonder Microsoft is nervous.

British Telecom claimed to own a patent on hyperlinks.

GnuCash 1.4 was released. Complaints about library dependencies were relatively rare that time around.

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

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