See also: last week's Linux History page.

This week in Linux history

Five years ago Caldera announced the acquisition of DR-DOS, and the filing of its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.

Mark Bolzern, of LinuxMall fame, got the first letter from William R. Della Croche, the clever guy who thought he would register the Linux trademark and start hitting up Linux companies for payments. That, of course, didn't last very long...

Three years ago (August 6, 1998): LWN commented on the relative lack of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) attacks against Linux, and predicted that there would be more such in the future. This year Microsoft has obliged with its attacks on open source.

Eric Raymond celebrated the first six months of the "open source" term.

In fact, we've come an astonishingly long way in a short time. Six months ago `free software' was barely a blip on the radar screens of the computer trade press and the corporate world -- and what they thought they knew, they didn't like. Today, `open source' is a hot topic not just in the trade press but in the most influential of the business-news magazines that shape corporate thinking.

The development kernel was 2.1.114; work continued on the 2.0.36 stable release. Much energy went into a vast flamewar over whether the devfs patch should go into the 2.2 kernel; in the end it didn't happen, but it will be there in 2.4. The beer-drinking penguin logo was removed from the development series.

Two years ago (August 5, 1999 LWN): SGI jumped into Linux with both feet, announcing a new Linux-based server system. The company also let it slip that Irix would not be ported to the Intel architecture.

Eric Raymond addressed the question of whether free software can be original:

But there is a more fundamental error in the implicit assumption that the cathedral model (or the bazaar model, or any other kind of management structure) can somehow make innovation happen reliably. This is nonsense. Gangs don't have breakthrough insights -- even volunteer groups of bazaar anarchists are usually incapable of genuine originality, let alone corporate committees of people with a survival stake in some status quo ante. Insight comes from individuals.

The development kernel release was 2.3.12. Linus Torvalds announced that the 2.3 kernel would go into feature freeze "in about two weeks." The 2.3 feature freeze was still months away in reality.

There was a rumor that VA Linux might file for an IPO.

ZDNet reported on Time magazine's top 100 important people of the century list. Bill Gates was number 16. Linus Torvalds ranked number 15 and also got his picture on the cover of Time.

One year ago (August 3, 2000 LWN): The FUD was flying this week. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer said Linux is communism in The Register. Michael Swaine questioned the originality of open source in this WebReview article. Dave Winer at Userland predicted the death of the software industry partly blaming open source. There was even an article on ZDNet claiming that security holes should be hidden to keep crackers from exploiting them. Of course holes that are not made public tend not to get fixed...

The current development kernel release was 2.4.0-test5. Linus sent out an announcement for this release, which contained lots of changes.

Grant Taylor launched LinuxPrinting.org, still a good resource for information about printing under Linux.

Caldera Systems and SCO announced a merger.

Ready for prime time? IBM was selling its S/390 with Linux. Computer Associates announced "a comprehensive suite of eBusiness management software" available for Linux on S/390.

Copyleft was added as a defendant in the DVD suit as a result of their selling T-shirts with the DeCSS code on the back. Copyleft founder Steve Blood was quoted in this ZDNet article.

"We've been marketing this since last January," Blood said. "It seems a bit late." According to the subpoena he received Monday, the DVD CCA had trouble locating him, despite the fact that the organization's Web site is easy to find.

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol.

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

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