Timeline Home

==> February

January, 2001

The long-awaited 2.4.0 kernel was released on January 4 (announcement).

Technocrat.net, a technology policy site run by Bruce Perens, shut down. It's still missed.

The first NSA Security Enhanced Linux release came out.

SourceForge claimed 100,000 developers and 13,000 projects after one year in operation (announcement).

EBIZ Enterprises completed its acquisition of Jones Business Systems. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

Richard Stallman becomes CEO of FreeDevelopers.Net. CEO, of course, means "Chief Ethics Officer." (announcement).

Once you realize that documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put on fire, and just ridiculed in general, THEN, and only then, have you reached the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to actually implement a driver. -- Linus on documentation.

The Ramen Worm attacks Linux systems, at least, those with very old security vulnerabilities. Regardless, Ramen proves that it can happen to us too.

Linuxcare and Turbolinux agree to a merger. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Lineo withdraws its IPO filing, realizing that it wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

VA Linux Systems issues a revenue warning, noting that the money isn't coming in like it used to (press release). VA is also named in several class action lawsuits alleging improprieties in its IPO.

Ximian and Conectiva announce equity investments. Ximian's haul is $15 million; Conectiva remains silent about what it was able to get.

Tuxtops bails out of the Linux laptop business (announcement). This business is eventually picked up by QliTech.

A back door is found in InterBase. It had been present for years, but remained undiscovered until InterBase was released under an open source license.

Linus merges ReiserFS into 2.4.1, despite a statement that only serious bug fixes would be accepted.

The first Debian IA-64 system boots (announcement).

Stocks are back on the rise after bottoming out at New Year's. The 2.4 kernel stream has been released, which means that we should start seeing production-quality versions seeping into the enterprise before summertime. Necessary consolidations are taking place, such as the planned merger of Linuxcare and Turbolinux. -- Evan Leibovitch in ZDNet, not exactly batting 1000.

The first release of Caldera's "Volution," its network administration package, is announced.

Julien Stern and Julien Boeuf break the SDMI watermarking scheme, and publish their results.

We're not blind to this problem. We don't want to be a chokepoint; it's in VA's interest for the community to know it's protected against accident or malfeasance. This is why we're developing a network of active mirror sites -- not just to improve performance, but so one of them could take the baton if the SourceForge primary site had to shut down for some reason. -- Eric Raymond on why we shouldn't worry about SourceForge. Mirror sites coming any day now...

LinuxPPC states its intent to become a non-profit corporation, but the transition apparently never happens.

LWN celebrated its third anniversary.

The Open Source Development Lab opens its doors.

Corel announces that it will sell its Linux division, though the actual transaction was long in coming.

The Atlanta Linux Showcase became the Annual Linux Showcase and announced a move to Oakland.

Cray announced a Linux cluster product, with claimed pre-orders and everything. That product has never materialized, however.

Stormix Technologies files for bankruptcy and vanishes, along with its "Storm Linux" distribution.

SuSE 7.1 is released and becomes the first major distribution to feature the 2.4 kernel.

MandrakeSoft announces the acquisition of Coursemetric and starts to recast itself as an education company. This one didn't necessarily seem like a good idea even at the time.

linux.conf.au was held in Sydney; see Marc Merlin's writeup.

The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo began in New York (LWN coverage), as did Linux Expo in Paris.

Timeline Home

==> February