January, 1999

"Prediction No. 4: Linux will become just another Unix. The Internet lost its charm when big business discovered it. The same will happen with Linux. Linux will wipe out SCO and Unixware and gain ground against NT, but will lose its soul in the process." -- Bob Lewis, InfoWorld.

Once widely denigrated by commercial developers as chaotic programming by committee, open source is now expected to come into its own this year as a business model, with potentially far-reaching consequences for developers and consumers of computer software. -- Amy Harmon, New York Times

Linus Torvalds complains that he is not getting patches for the ISDN subsystem, and threatens to put out 2.2 without them.

(January 9) Creative Labs says there will be no SB Live driver for Linux. From their note: "Creative has no plans of releasing its intellectual property to the general public."

The Linux Kernel Archive Mirror System goes live eliminating all problems in getting kernel sources. The quality of this mirror system remains unmatched - it just works.

Joey Hess inaugurates the Debian Weekly News. The first issue breaks the news that Richard Stallman uses Debian, and talks about Debian at trade shows.

The Artist's Guide to the Gimp by Michael Hammel is published by SSC.

(January 12) Creative Labs advertises for a Linux driver writer to produce an SB Live driver (job posting here).

Kernel Traffic launches, carrying detailed summaries of linux-kernel discussions. The first issue looked at vfork, the "C++ in the kernel" discussion, and more.

Tucows launches LinuxBerg, its Linux software download site.

Samba 2.0 is released. It contains a reverse-engineered implementation of the Microsoft domain controller protocols, allowing Linux servers to provide complete services to Windows networks.

Corel sells its NetWinder division to Hardware Computing Canada.

Debian 2.1 ("slink") goes into "deep freeze."

Slackware finally gets a web site with the launch of www.slackware.com.

LWN completes its first year of publication.

Microsoft Corp. will shout it out to the world when Windows 2000 finally ships. Linux creator Linus Torvald [sic] announced the arrival of the next generation of Linux, version 2.2, with a simple note to the Linux-kernel mailing list. -- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Sm@rt Reseller.

(January 25) Kernel 2.2.0 is released after more than two years of development.

Hewlett Packard and Compaq announce plans to offer Linux-based systems. SGI contents itself with providing information on how to bring up Linux on its systems.

The TCP Wrapper code is replaced by a version with a back door, showing that evil stuff can be concealed in open source code too - at least for a while. The modified version remains available for less than ten hours, and no sites are compromised as a result. (Details here).

Linus announces that 2.2.1 will not be released for several weeks. The world responds by turning up an ugly "crash the system" bug in 2.2.0, necessitating a quick 2.2.1 release.

The Harmony Project, which sought to create a LGPL clone of the Qt library, is officially declared dead.

Loki Entertainment Software announces that it will port "Civilization: Call To Power" to Linux.

Guido van Rossum and others sent out their Computer Programming for Everybody into DARPA.

Transvirtual's open source JVM, Kaffe, attracts attention over at Salon.com.

A month after Sun announced the release of the JDK 1.2, Blackdown's JDK 1.2 is reported to be running on Intel and PowerPC platforms.

February, 1999

But despite the real and considerable benefits of this development model, open-source software is not likely to upset the balance of power between big players and newer entrants in the software markets. And despite the publicity surrounding a few companies that focus exclusively on open-source software, it will not be the force that drives the next wave of startups to success. Nikki Goth Itoi, Red Herring

Kernel 2.2.1, the "brown paper bag release," is turned loose upon the world.

Wichert Akkerman becomes the leader of the Debian project, replacing Ian Jackson.

Red Hat moves to larger offices and falls off the net for a few days.

Lyx 1.0.0 is released (announcement here).

Which is the biggest Linux user group? The Silicon Valley LUG and the Skåne Sjælland Linux User Group have a "mine is bigger than yours" fight, with inconclusive results.

(Feb 15) Windows refund day happens, but very few people actually get refunds. Nonetheless, awareness of the "Microsoft tax" is raised.

Dell starts selling Linux-installed systems, though they only offer Linux on a couple of server models to start.

Linuxcare rolls out its service offerings, becoming a high-profile Linux company almost overnight.

Security holes in wu-ftpd and proftpd create problems for site administrators.

Linux-Mandrake 5.3 is released; this release is strongly based on Red Hat 5.2, with a bunch of extra goodies added.

KDE 1.1 is released.

Samba 2.0.1 is released, followed quickly by the 2.0.2 "brown paper bag" release.

The Debian 2.1 release is scheduled for March 2.

Let's face it, Windows Refund Day showed not the strengths of Linux, FreeBSD, etc., but their weaknesses. The sparse turnout and pseudo-guerilla theater at the so-called rallies indicated that the open-source-OS market is immature at many levels. Mark Hall, Performance Computing

The international release of SuSE 6.0 is finally made available.

Glibc 2.1 is released, then bounced from the gnu.org site because it does not build properly with gcc 2.8. The increasing gap between the gcc and egcs compiler projects is thus highlighted.

The Burlington Coat Factory announced that it will be installing Linux on over 1100 machines in 250 stores.

IBM announces a partnership with Red Hat to insure that Red Hat's distribution will work properly on IBM systems.

LWN becomes available in Japanese, thanks to the efforts of the folks at ChangeLog.net.

Bruce Perens resigns from the Open Source Initiative following repeated disagreements over what is really free software.

Prosa Debian GNU/Linux is released, featuring a great deal of localization for Italian-speaking users. (Announcement here).

"Uncle George" announce the release of his port of the JAVA JDK 1.2 non-commercial sources for the Alpha architecture. Reports come in of progress on the Blackdown JDK 1.2 port, but no code is yet available for release.

SGI releases the GLX extension code; many other releases are to follow. (GLX here).

March, 1999

(March 2) The Debian 2.1 release fails to happen on schedule. A couple of last-minute problems popped up, and the Project chose to miss the trade show window rather than release a distribution with known bugs.

GNOME 1.0 is released with great fanfare at a LinuxWorld press conference.

Word leaks out that Sun will release Solaris under some sort of not-quite-so-open source license.

Betting $5 on a 100-to-1 underdog can be fun. Betting $50,000 would be foolish. Yet some PC users are making similarly outrageous wagers on Linux, the underdog in the operating-system wars. -- Jesse Berst, ZDNet.

Weekly coverage of Zope events starts up. The weekly report, usually written by Amos Latteier, is sponsored by Digital Creations. Check out the first such report.

Troll Tech announces that it will port the Opera web browser to Linux.

Linux Magazine debuts, bringing some additional competition to the Linux print business.

VA Research and Intel team up to port Linux to Intel's Merced processor. Intel also invests in VA directly.

Red Hat launches its Linux portal.

VA Research buys the Linux.com domain for $1,000,000, announces plans to turn it into a Linux portal. Microsoft's rumored bid for the domain is frustrated.

Like a Russian revolutionary erased from a photograph, he is being written out of history. Stallman is the originator of the free-software movement and the GNU/Linux operating system. But you wouldn't know it from reading about LinuxWorld. Linus Torvalds got all the ink. -- Leander Kahney, Wired News.

Dell starts bundling support from Linuxcare with its Linux-installed systems.

IBM, Compaq, Oracle and Novell all announce investments in Red Hat.

Kernel 2.2.3 is released, after numerous complaints are raised about the buggy nature of 2.2.2. (pre-release announcement here).

(March 9) Debian 2.1 is released (announcement here).

Cendant announces the deployment of Linux systems in 4000 hotels.

Version 1.0 of the Qt public license is announced. This license is deemed to be "open source," but grumbling continues.

Corel announces that it will create and market its own Linux distribution.

Augustin said he intends to take his privately held company out for an initial public offering - but not until next year, after the company gets through some growing pains. Charles Babcock, ZDNet on why we shouldn't have seen a VA IPO yet.

Apple announces that parts of its upcoming operating system will be released under an open source license. The higher-level applications which make Apple unique are to remain proprietary, however.

The BeroLinux distribution is merged into Linux-Mandrake (announcement here).

CeBIT '99 happens in Germany. KDE wins the "Software Innovation of the year" award (announcement), the Linux Community wins a "highlight" award, and SAP announces that its R/3 ERP system will be available for Linux.

MTI purchases a 20% stake in Caldera Systems.

VA Research acquires Electric Lichen LLC, a "boutique" PR firm specializing in Linux and the home of Jim Gleason and Don Marti.

I implore the developers of the free software community to not let Eric Raymond lead the community down this road of self-destruction, but fight him with every fiber in your body. Software needs to be free, not just open. -- Christian Schaller, LinuxPower.

Eric Raymond threatens to quit with his "Take my job, please" essay.

VA Research outsources its manufacturing as a way of keeping up with demand.

SAP invests in Red Hat.

The Melissa virus creates difficulties worldwide. Linux users yawn.

The first pre-release of the Blackdown JDK 1.2 port is announced. for both the Intel and PowerPC platforms.

Sun licenses several of the Java standard extensions (Java 3D, Java Media Framework, Java Advanced Imaging, and Java Sound) to Steve Byrne on behalf of the Blackdown porting team.

Side Effects Software ports Houdini - its 3D animation package - to Linux (announcement here).

Matrox releases specs to its G200 series of graphics cards.

April, 1999

Netscape celebrates the first anniversary of the Mozilla release. Netscape's press release celebrates the anniversary: "In a year's time, mozilla.org has gone from being a beautiful idea to a beautiful reality."

Jamie Zawinski quits the Mozilla project; his resignation letter paints it as a failure. "And here we are, a year later. And we haven't even shipped a beta yet." In general, the perceived failure of Mozilla brings a period of questioning. In the end, Mozilla and free software both go on.

Dell invests in Red Hat, and also start shipping server systems with Red Hat Linux preinstalled.

Dell also claims to be the first vendor offering web-based sales of Linux systems. A number of Linux systems vendors wondered what they had been doing all that time; Penguin Computing issued a press release contesting the claim.

Systems shipped by Dell also include 90 days of support from LinuxCare.

Al Gore's presidential campaign web site claims to be Open Source. That claim is gone, but the site still claims: "In the spirit of the Open Source movement, we have established the Gore 2000 Volunteer Source Code Project. www.algore2000.com is an 'open site'".

Today I received the following threat in e-mail from Eric Raymond. The message was copied to the Silicon Valley Linux User's Group officers, who you may consult regarding its authenticity. The police have been notified. Because I know that Eric is a firearms enthusiast, for my own protection, I feel the best strategy is for me to publicize the threat widely. The Bruce and Eric game turns ugly

TheLinuxStore.com opens up, starts selling Linux systems at rock-bottom prices.

The Mindcraft study is released and immediately becomes the target of intense criticism. The study is funded by Microsoft, done in a Microsoft lab, and features a highly-tuned NT server against a completely untuned Linux system. The study is rightly trashed, but it also points out some performance problems in the Linux kernel. Kernel hackers respond by fixing the problems.

...please imagine what it is like to see an idealistic project stymied and made ineffective, because people don't usually give it the credit for what it has done. If you're an idealist like me, that can ruin your whole decade. -- Richard Stallman on GNU/Linux

Version 1.0 of FreeS/Wan is released.

Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 is released. This release makes Caldera the first vendor out with a release based on the 2.2 kernel, includes an installer that raises the bar for all distributors, and includes a version number jump (the previous was 1.3).

Corel announces that its Linux distribution will be based on Debian and KDE. The announcement gets a lot of attention, and raises somewhat the profile of the Debian Project. (Announcement here).

Linus Torvalds speaks at Comdex/Spring.

SuSE 6.1 is released.

LinuxNewbie.org hits the net (site here), and tries to make life easier for Linux beginners everywhere.

The egcs steering committee becomes the official maintainer for gcc, thus ending one of the more unpleasant free software forks in recent times.

Python 1.5.2 is released.

KDE 1.1.1 beta is released

HP announces 24x7 support services for the Caldera, TurboLinux, Red Hat and SuSE distributions. They also release OpenMail for Linux.

"Where do you want to go tomorrow?" disappears from linux.de after threats from "a large company."

VA Research acquires Linux Hardware Solutions.

Red Hat 6.0 is released. It includes nice things like the 2.2 kernel, but looks a little lackluster compared to OpenLinux 2.2.

UltraPenguin goes away. The UltraSparc distribution sees the end of its life - everything of interest from this distribution had been folded into Red Hat 6.0.

Cygnus announced an open source Java compiler. It is rumored that IBM's just-ported-to-Win32 JVM will also be made available for Linux.

Linux finishes first in the International Operating System Counter survey; it runs on 31.3% of the 1.4 million hosts surveyed. (IOSC here).

May, 1999

Guido van Rossum and Donald Becker win the "excellence in programming" award given by Dr. Dobb's Journal.

wu-ftpd exploits create security problems across the net, more fixes are distributed.

Creative Technologies releases a beta SB Live driver. The driver proves problematic, but, due to its closed-source nature, can not be fixed.

Linus writes a new Universal Serial Bus (USB) driver and tosses it into the 2.2.7 kernel. This move comes as a bit of a surprise to the developers of the UUSBD project, who had been working on USB for some time. Progress on USB support does speed up after the change, however.

I view Linux as something that's not Microsoft-a backlash against Microsoft, no more and no less. I don't think it will be very successful in the long run... My experience and some of my friends' experience is that Linux is quite unreliable. Microsoft is really unreliable but Linux is worse. -- Ken Thompson doesn't like Linux

Definite Linux 6.0 is released.

Tcl 8.1 is released.

KDE 1.1.1 is released (announcement here).

Rebel.com is the new name for Hardware Computing Canada, the firm that bought Corel's Netwinder division.

Linux Expo is held in Raleigh, NC. This is perhaps the last time this conference is held in this form. (LWN coverage here).

Those two little words - open source - have become a magical incantation, like portal in 1998 or push in 1997. Just whisper them and all will be yours: media attention, consumer interest, and, of course, venture capital. -- Andrew Leonard, Wired

Restrictions on the export of cryptographic code violate the first amendment of the US Constitution according to this ruling by the Ninth circuit court.

Kernel 2.2.8 comes out, and, simultaneously, 2.3.0, beginning the new development series. (announcement here).

Japanese Debian 2.1 is released by the Debian JP Project. Over 200 new packages provide Japanese support for the distribution. (Announcement here).

TurboLinux announces a high-availability Linux cluster offering. Some grumbling is heard about their treatment of the Linux-HA project and proprietary code.

Sun Microsystems announces a utility to run Linux binaries on Solaris x86.

LinuxHQ is yanked away from Jim Pick, who has operated it for years. The site is eventually sold to Linux.org. The site formerly known as LinuxHQ returns as kernelnotes.org and continues business as usual.

Two "open source exchange" sites - the sourceXchange and Cosource.com - pop up in the same week. Both intend to connect paying open source projects with interested developers, though they take different approaches. (LWN coverage on May 20 and December 9).

O'Reilly posts "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution" on the web as open source in its own right. This book includes chapters from Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Michael Tiemann, Larry Wall, Bruce Perens, and many more.

Linus Torvalds is awarded an honorary doctorate from the School of Mathematics and Science, Stockholm University.

Linux.com goes live as the latest in Linux portal sites.

Pacific HiTech renames itself to TurboLinux.

VA Research renames itself to VA Linux Systems.

SGI announces that it will port its XFS filesystem to Linux.

VA Linux Systems hires kernel hacker Ted Ts'o.

Slackware 4.0 is released.

Corel's WordPerfect for Linux generates over 1 million download attempts.

LinuxPR.com is launched by the LinuxToday folks; it is a news site specializing in Linux-related press releases.

The inaugural issue of Havoc Pennington's now-weekly Gnome Development Summary goes out.

Projects to produce secure Linux distributions come into the news, with the birth of three projects, SecureLinux, Khaos Linux and Bastille Linux.

Linux-Mandrake 6.0 is released (announcement here).

The Linux Counter exceeds 100,000 entries on May 26, at 8:09 GMT. (Counter here).

June, 1999

Microsoft takes its first step into open source development, contracting with ActiveState to do Perl development under the Artistic license. People noted and watched to see if they would use this to embrace and extend the perl platform. The jury is still out on that.

LinuxDev.net comes on-line, with Linux news specifically tailored for developers. By the end of December, they reported over 260,000 visitors to the site.

Debian announces a new logo, one that took months of effort to discuss and judge. In spite of all that, they managed to choose a very nice one!

The first Philippine Linux conference, entitled Linux '99, was held at the Shangri-La Hotel, Makati City, Philippines.

The Fun With Perl mailing list is announced.

The Linux Professional Institute announces initial corporate sponsors, including Linuxcare, IBM, Macmillan USA, Computing McGraw-Hill, Linux Journal, and New Riders Publishing, along with SuSE, Caldera and New Wave Technology.

The Australian Open Source Symposium is held in Melbourne, Australia.

(June 25th and 26th) Ian Jackson and Stephen Tweedie head to Birmingham, U.K., for the UKUUG - Linux '99 Conference.

A remote denial-of-service problem turns up in the 2.2 kernel. Alan Cox produces a patch within hours, apologizes for taking so long.

Software in the Public Interest becomes a non-profit organization.

Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler quits Red Hat with a certain amount of evident bad feeling. He heads west, and ends up at VA Linux Systems. (Resignation note here).

Sun Microsystems releases its high-performance clustering tools under the "Sun Community Source License." (Announcement here).

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 Open Source trademark fades away because the US PTO was unwilling to register it as a trademark. This release describes the Open Source Initiative's response, including a plan to create a separate "OSI Certified" trademark - a plan which remains unimplemented at the end of the year.

VA Linux Systems hires Jon 'maddog' Hall away from Compaq.

Guylhem Aznar takes over management of the Linux Documentation Project. He brings with him a set of ambitious plans to revitalize the project, which had slowed down somewhat over the years. (LDP here).

LinuxPPC 5.0 is released.

PostgreSQL v6.5 is released; new features include a top-quality locking scheme and hot backups. (Announcement here).

VA Linux Systems' board includes Eric Raymond, who is the unofficial spokesman of the open-source movement. He saved the company some embarrassment by vetoing the name "Linux.com"... The Economist

Linux Expo '99 Paris is held (report here).

Eric Raymond speaks at Microsoft (report here).

VA Linux Systems gets investments from Intel, SGI, Lehman Brothers, Sumitomo Corporation, and others.

Hewlett-Packard announces a line of Linux-based workstations (announcement here).

Eric Raymond releases "The Magic Cauldron"; this paper is the third in the series that started with "The Cathedral and the Bazaar."

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. -- Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld

The Mindcraft benchmark is rerun with Linux experts present. NT still wins; Linux comes out with set of things to fix. Many of the fixes happen within a few weeks.

Slashdot is acquired by Andover.net (announcement and commentary here).

Announcing....KRUD. Tummy.com announces "Kevin's Redhat Uber Distribution," which is a value-added repackaging of Red Hat 6.0.

TurboLinux Workstation 3.6 is released.

The Apache Software Foundation is created (announcement here).

Qt 2.0 is released (announcement here).

LinuxTag '99 is held at Kaiserslautern University (summary here).

The Linux Portaloo is launched by Alan Cox.

Sun releases the JDK 1.2.2. Still only a pre-release of the JDK 1.2 from Blackdown is available.

IBM releases their version of Sun's JDK 1.1.6 for Linux, including their just-in-time compiler technology. This port looks to take the lead for performance.

Yet Another Perl Conference is held at Carnegie-Mellon University (writeup and pictures here).

NVidia releases open source drivers for all of its chipsets (drivers here).

Matrox releases specs for its G400 chipset.

July, 1999

Lotus announces that it will port Domino to Linux

The Debian Project begins to discuss a potato freeze, with an eye toward a possible September release.

Midgard 1.1 is released (announcement here).

The Conference of Australian Linux Users was held in Melbourne, Australia. "People came, they saw, they conquered ... Pizza. (with apologies to John "maddog" Hall). Australia's first ever national Linux conference has drawn to a close and well over two hundred Linux devotees from around Australia and the world have congregated, socialised, fraternised, lectured, listened, asked, answered and shared with their peers ... and munched through (literally) carloads of Pizza. "

Red Hat announces its community stock offering, whereby Linux developers are given the opportunity to buy Red Hat stock at the IPO price. Some denounce the offering as spam; others have numerous difficulties in participating in the program. In the end, participation is over 80%.

Oracle releases Oracle8i for Linux, and cites a great deal of interest from the business community.

Caldera Thin Clients becomes Lineo; its emphasis starts to move away from DR-DOS and toward an embedded version of OpenLinux called "Embeddix."

Dataquest predicts that Linux will account for a quarter of all server appliance sales by 2003.

Sure, the friction between individual companies will no doubt continue, and the sniping may reach hitherto unimagined intensity as the dollar amounts involved continue to rise; but again, that's only natural, and nothing to be afraid of. There's always the safety of free software -- the first, last and best weapon preventing any company in the Linux world from permanently calling the tune to which everyone else dances. Andrew Leonard, Salon

The Netscape Application Server will not be available for Linux after all the Sun/Netscape alliance announces.

The Ottawa Linux Symposium is held in, surprisingly, Ottawa. (Summary report here).

IBM announces Linux support services, effectively ending the (already pointless) "no support" charges against Linux.

IBM released DB2 for Linux (Hype page here).

VA Linux Systems announces its support services.

TurboLinux claims to have outsold Windows in Japan - at least briefly.

August, 1999

Eric Raymond releases a new version of The Cathedral and the Bazaar (read it here), and announces that O'Reilly will be packaging up his papers into a book aimed at business readers.

We coders had been abruptly disenfranchised, after having had silver carrots waved in front of our noses. I'd opened my first money-market account just now, in order to take part in the commercial future of something I believed in -- and the door had been slammed in my face. C. Scott Ananian has trouble with the Red Hat offering, Salon

Linus calls for a 2.3 feature freeze in two weeks in this note. It ends up taking rather longer than that...

MandrakeSoft hires KDE hacker David Faure to work on Koffice (announcement here).

Red Hat issues a set of GNOME updates. At this point, more than 30% of the original 6.0 release has been replaced with updates.

...the open-source movement will implode as its community-based approach is crushed under the weight of the movement's popularity. Egos will weigh in and the result will be splintering into multiple factions, which will greatly reduce the movement's effectiveness. -- Bob O'Donnell, InfoWorld.

The second LinuxWorld Conference and Expo is held in San Jose (LWN coverage here).

Red Hat's Initial Public Offering happens despite a market that is hostile to IPOs. A last-minute repricing helps to create difficulties for people participating in the community offering. The stock price immediately rises to $50; a value that seems high at the time.

IBM joins the Trillian project, which is porting Linux to the IA-64 ("Merced", "Itanium") processor.

Microsoft puts a Windows 2000 system on the net as a security challenge, it goes down several times in the first day. LinuxPPC has better luck with a similar challenge.

Stable kernel 2.2.11 is released, and Linus hands off the 2.2 kernel entirely to Alan Cox.

Linus complains that he is not getting ISDN patches, and that the 2.4 kernel may go out with an old ISDN implementation.

For the umpteenth time, someone paved paradise, put up a parking lot. For the thousands of Linux coders who've build the utopian open-source movement - offering free help to create a free operating system - the IPO of Red Hat Software was a sure sign of Wall Street cutting the ribbon on the new Linux mall. -- The Industry Standard

November 1 will be the freeze date for the Debian potato release according to this announcement.

Definite Linux 6.1 is released.

Motorola jumps into Linux announcements of embedded systems products, support and training services, and a partnership with Lineo.

The LWN Linux Stocks Page is launched to track the increasing number of publicly-traded Linux companies.

The Red Hat Wealth Monitor is also launched.

Freshmeat.net is acquired by Andover.net; it joins Slashdot in Andover's growing stable of Linux sites.

RAID 0.90 is included in the 2.2.12 prepatches, then removed after concerns about the need to upgrade utilities and some residual problems.

Support for 4GB of memory on 32-bit Intel systems is released by Andrea Arcangeli and Gerhard Wichert.

Atipa Linux Solutions builds a 200-node Beowulf cluster for Motorola (press release here). It is to be used for semiconductor modeling and development.

Debian developer Joey Hess calls for an interim Debian release while Potato is being finalized; his proposal eventually goes down among fears that such a release would distract effort from getting Potato done.

A 1000-node Beowulf system for genetic programming is announced by Genetic Programming, Inc.

Corel and Rebel.com donate a pile of NetWinder systems to the United Nations Development Program.

The AXA Innovation Fund makes an equity investment in MandrakeSoft (Announcement here). MandrakeSoft makes other announcements, including the creation of its "Cooker" development release, U.S. support offerings via Bynari Systems, and more. (More in LWN's interview of Gäel Duval).

Shares of Red Hat, which is betting it can popularize a free computer operating system that competes with Microsoft's Windows, could tumble in the next few months as the novelty of the first public Linux company wears off, analysts said. -- News.com, August 22, 1999, when Red Hat cost $68/share.

Red Hat and Caldera Systems both announce year-2000 compliance for their distributions.

SGI contributes spinlock metering code to the Linux kernel.

After decades as vaporware, Ted Nelson's Xanadu is released to the world as open source. (Web page here).

Midgard 1.2 is released (announcement here).

The sourceXchange posts its first six RFP's, all of which come from Hewlett-Packard.

Red Hat severs its relationship with the Itsutsubashi Research Company in Japan, announcing that it will instead develop its own Japanese distribution. Itsutsubashi goes on to form the LASER5 distribution, which will compete with Red Hat.

The O'Reilly Open Source Convention is held in Monterey, CA (web page here).

A new set of FTP security vulnerabilities causes problems on the net.

Sun acquires StarDivision; it announces plans to release StarOffice under the Sun Community Source License and to make a web-enabled version of the office suite.

A second pre-release of the Blackdown teams' port of the JDK 1.2 from Sun is made available.

Cryptix, a clean-room implementation of Sun's Java Cryptography Extentions (JCD) is released.

September, 1999

Zope 2.0 is released (announcement here).

The first big Linux stock rush happens. Shares in Applix more than double on volume reaches nearly 27 million shares - three times the 9 million shares that are actually on the market.

HPTi wins a contract to provide a Linux-based cluster to U.S. government. This is the first big victory for Linux clusters in competitive government procurement. (Press release here).

Bind 8.2 is released with a license that makes part of the system non-free, leading to a big debate. The issues are worked out in the end. (LWN coverage here).

SCO trashes Linux in a brochure distributed in northern Europe. "Linux at this moment can be considered more a play thing for IT students rather than a serious operating system in which to place the functioning, security and future of a business. Because Linux is basically a free-for-all it means that no individual person/company is accountable should anything go wrong, plus there is no way to predict which way Linux will evolve."

Any time you're sort of slacking off or saying you're thinking of taking a day off our president says, "You know, I'll bet Bill Gates is working today." -- Marc Ewing, interviewed on News.com.

Security problems with Proftpd open up vulnerabilities across the net.

Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 is released.

Version 1.0 of the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is released. GnuPG is a free replacement for the PGP encryption program.

Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp. in Burlington, N.J. is spending $1 million or so to buy 1,250 Linux-equipped PCs from Dell, but it won't pay Red Hat a dime for support, says Michael Prince, chief information officer. "I suppose Red Hat's business model makes sense to somebody, but it makes no sense to us," he says. -- Daniel Lyons, Forbes, May 31, 1999. Never say never.

Gateway offers server systems with Linux installed (Red Hat PR here).

The Burlington Coat Factory buys support from Red Hat (Red Hat PR here).

Stock in Red Hat hits $135/share. The price seems unbelievably high at the time...

Caldera Systems releases the source to its "Lizard" installer.

Pluto Meeting '99 is held in Padua, Italy. Speakers include kernel hacker Andrea Arcangeli.

Channel One Gmbh registers the "Linux" trademark in Germany. They back down in a hurry once the screaming starts.

IBM certifies the Thinkpad 600E laptop for Linux despite the fact that installation is difficult and not everything works. See IBM's installation guide for details.

Debian 2.1r3 is released; it contains just bug and security fixes. (Announcement here).

Development kernel 2.3.18 is released, it includes the integration of the PCMCIA drivers, which have been distributed separately for many years. The 2.3 feature freeze is also announced.

Corel calls for beta testers for its Linux distribution. Corel gets itself into trouble with a beta testing agreement that appears to violate the GPL, but, under pressure, backs off.

KDE 1.1.2 is released (announcement here).

Cobalt Networks files for its IPO.

The offering price of the Shares was arbitrarily established by us in order for us to raise a gross amount of approximately $23,000,000 in this offering. The offering price bears no relationship whatsoever to our assets, earnings, book value, or other criteria of value. LinuxOne's IPO filing

Linux Demo Day is held worldwide (Web page here).

The first ext3 patch is released, making journaling filesystems for Linux a reality. This work, by Stephen Tweedie, is not ready for prime time, but progresses quickly. (LWN coverage here).

Linux-Mandrake 6.1 is released (announcement here).

Andover.net files for its Initial Public Offering.

LinuxOne files for its Initial Public Offering. This filing comes as a surprise to many, since (1) few people had ever heard of LinuxOne, and (2) the company has no products, no revenues, no underwriter, and had only been in existence for a few months.

[The penguins] are, in fact, trained actors used to appearing before hot lights and cameras. Some of their commercial credits include Batman (the movie), as well as several frozen food ads. However, it would now appear that their career as the Magic penguin (nicknamed 'MeL' by the Company) is at an end The Magic Software penguins get fired.

The web site for the British Monarchy is running Linux, reveals Netcraft.

The Embedded Systems Conference is held in San Jose. Linux has a high profile there. Cygnus releases "EL/IX". (LWN coverage here).

PC Week runs a "hack this system" challenge, and the Linux system is cracked. It turns out that the initial breakin happened via a third-party CGI script, and PC Week had not bothered to install the published security updates.

VA Linux Systems announces its new Professional Services Group.

Linus Torvalds is awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Stockholm. (Article in Swedish here).

The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo is held in Tokyo (summary report here).

The Blackdown team reports break-throughs on the port of the JDK 1.2 to Linux. Hopes run high that this will result, finally, in a stable release.

GPL e-commerce applications arrive. Two open source e-commerce suites, OpenSales and Yams, are released.

Gimp 1.1 enters feature freeze.

The Open Source Practice Management Summit is held in Toronto, Ontario. The conference is sponsored by Minoru Development Corporation (announcement here).

LinuxPPC 1999 Q3 released.

October, 1999

Microsoft posts its "Linux Myths" page, which attacks Linux full on. Some of its criticisms are justified, others not. (See the Linux Myths page, and LWN's response).

It is discovered that ssh 1.1.12 had a free license, unlike later versions. Thus is born the OpenSSH project which sets out to remove all patented algorithms and make a truly free secure shell utility.

The "final" version of Joseph Pranevich's "Wonderful World of Linux 2.4" is released. Read it here to see the expected list of changes in the 2.4 kernel.

Definite Linux 7.0 is released (announcement here).

SCO makes an equity investment in the Linux Mall.

Red Hat Linux 6.1 is released.

TurboLinux receives investments from Intel, Broadview Associates, and August Capital. The deployment of 20,000 systems in Japanese medical clinics is also announced.

The Atlanta Linux Showcase happens (LWN coverage here).

The LWN Penguin Gallery is launched. It currently contains almost 200 Linux penguins, with more still being added.

VA Linux, O'Reilly, and SGI get together to sponsor a commercial Debian "box set" product (announcement here).

Bruce (Perens) 2.0 is announced (announcement here).

The second KDE Developers Conference is held in Erlangen, Germany.

VA Linux Systems files for its Initial Public Offering.

Bob Young's book "Under the Radar - How Red Hat Changed the Software Business and Took Microsoft By Surprise" is published by Coriolis.

Linux pushed Microsoft into the third phase. Suddenly we were able to see the emperor clearly, and we could see that he had no clothes. Nothing that Microsoft says seems believable any more. An operating system that cannot perform properly is not acceptable any longer. We have a choice. For years, we accepted what we could not change. But change is easy now. The finery the emperor told us he was wearing is missing. The emperor has no clothes. -- Al Fasoldt, Technofile.

Cobalt Networks and Gateway announce a deal where Gateway becomes a reseller of Cobalt's servers. (Announcement here).

LinuxToday is acquired by Internet.com; co-founder Dave Whitinger leaves to pursue other opportunities (LWN coverage here).

October GNOME is released, containing lots of fixes, improvements, etc. (Announcement here).

Motorola invests in Lineo.

Red Hat and Compaq announce a joint support agreement.

More wu-ftpd vulnerabilities open up a new set of security holes in Linux systems...

IBM announces their JVM for the JDK 1.1.8 for Linux, touting performance exceeding that under Windows NT.

Sun pre-announces a Java 2-compliant JVM for Linux. Questions come up as to how this relates to the Blackdown team's port, but remain unanswered, though the Infoworld article does mention Sun's continuing work with Blackdown.

The FreeGIS project is announced, its purpose is to promote the development and use of free geographical information system software (announcement here).

The GRASS GIS system is released under the GPL (web site here).

A Linux news site devoted to embedded systems debuts: LinuxDevices.com.

November, 1999

It all happened because DVD playback software for Linux doesn't exist. There are numerous DVD playback utilities for Windows --WinDVD, ATI DVD, Compaq DVD, XingDVD -- but nothing, nada, zip for Linux players. And if there's one thing about Linux users, they're do-ers, not whiners. -- Andy Patrizio, Wired News

Linux DVD devlopers crack the DVD encryption scheme. They succeed in demonstrating (1) that the DVD scheme is poor, and (2) that closed-source cryptography is almost always a mistake.

Support for 64GB of main memory on 32-bit Intel processors was developed by Ingo Molnar and folded into the 2.3 kernel.

The Debian "potato" freeze is postponed until November 7.

Slackware 7 is released. The previous version was 4; the jump in version numbers is done as a "marketing" move... (Announcement here).

Creative Technology releases a driver for its SB Live card - under the GPL.

Red Hat creates the "Red Hat Center for Open Source", a non-profit organization that "...will sponsor, support, promote and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public."

Fortunately for Microsoft, however, there are only so many developers in the world willing to devote their talents to writing, testing, and debugging software pro bono publico.... It is unlikely ... that a sufficient number of open-source developers will commit to developing and continually updating the large variety of applications that an operating system would need to attract in order to present a significant number of users with a viable alternative to Windows. -- Judge Jackson's findings of fact, from the Microsoft trial

Linux-India operates a highly successful booth at IT.COM '99, a high-profile conference in India. (Report and photos here).

Red Hat announces a new version of its distribution made jointly with Oracle. It is to include high-performance tweaks, and Motif as well.

Microsoft is found to be a monopoly in U.S. District Court. The findings of fact show little faith in the ability of Linux to present a challenge to Microsoft.

SGI releases its kernel crash dump analyzer, adding to the set of kernel utilities donated by SGI. (Web page here).

A version of Reiserfs with journaling is released by the folks at Namesys, meaning that Linux has two journaling filesystems available. (Press release here, and LWN coverage here).

(Nov. 7) The Debian "Potato" freeze is rescheduled - to January 15, 2000. Problems with several aspects of the distribution - especially the boot disks, causes the delay. (Announcement here).

Kondara MNU/Linux 1.0 is released; Kondara is a Japanese distribution based on Red Hat's Raw Hide.

Cobalt Networks goes public, and the stock immediately begins trading at $130/share, almost six times its offering price ($22/share). The frenzy for Linux stocks begins in earnest.

The Comdex Linux Business Expo is held in Las Vegas. Attendance and interest are high; many people see Linux for the first time. (LWN coverage here).

Corel launches its Linux distribution at the Linux Business Expo.

The Linux Professional Institute completes its first professional certification examination for Linux.

SuSE 6.3 is announced, for shipment in December (announcement here).

Mozilla Milestone 11 is released, the open-source browser finally starts to approach an "alpha-test" level of usability.

Using Samba is released by O'Reilly. This book is adopted by the Samba Project, and is available under an open content license. (Announcement here)

Sybase announces support for Zope development (announcement here).

Red Hat buys Cygnus for almost $700 million in stock. Rumors of other acquisitions by Red Hat begin to circulate, and show no signs of stopping.

VA Linux Systems sets its IPO price at $11-13/share.

VA Linux Systems and SuSE enter into a development partnership (announcement here).

Supercomputing '99 is held, and has a significant Linux presence (report here).

The XFree86 project joins X.org as an honorary member.

The Linux Documentation Project comes out with a new logo, new web pages, new documents, and the ability to work with the DocBook format. (Project here).

LWN.net's web server fails to achieve one solid year of uptime by three days when a raccoon brings down power across a city block.

Microsoft may have unlimited funds with which to develop their products, but Open Source products simply cannot be starved for cash. Their development is funded with their users' time and effort, not with revenues from any sale. Use value again, not sale value. -- Rob Landley, The Motley Fool

ET-Linux 1.2 is released by Prosa (web page here).

Real-time Linux 2.0 is released (announcement here).

VA Linux Systems announces its "Directed Share Program," which makes a small amount of shares available to Linux developers at the IPO price.

SuSE receives investments from Intel and Apax Partners. (Announcement here).

Early reports indicate that a JDK 1.2.2 and a JDK 1.1.8 release from the Blackdown team are expected mid-month.

Sun posts job advertisements for Java developers to work with supporting Java on the Linux platform.

The second edition of the Gimp Users Manual is released. It is available on the web, and is also published in book form by Coriolis.

Alternative: Linux is held in Montréal, speakers include Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, and many others (web site here).

December, 1999

The ALSA Professional Team is formed, this team, funded by SuSE, will work full-time at developing the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. (Announcement here).

Andover.net goes public at $18/share, closes over $60. The result is seen as a victory for both Andover and the OpenIPO process.

Gee. Remember when the big question was "How do we make money at this?" -- Eric Raymond

VA Linux Systems goes public the following day after two repricings. The final IPO price is $30/share; that price rises immediately to $300, before closing around $250. It sets the record for the biggest IPO rise in the history of the NASDAQ.

Linux fever strikes many other stocks, including some that are peripherally related to Linux, if at all.

Our mission, our evangelism to the open source community, is that money is good. The fact that open source can move forward without money being involved is great, but money can make it better. -- CoSource.com CEO Bernie Thompson, in Upside.

Linux kernel 2.3.30 is released, it includes initial support for NUMA systems. Non-Uniform Memory Access is an important technique used in large-scale multiprocessor systems. (LWN coverage here).

Sun releases a Java 2 implementation for Linux. In the process, Sun neglects to credit the Blackdown Team for doing much of the work, creating a number of unhappy people. (Sun announcement here, and LWN coverage here).

SuSE 6.3 starts shipping.

Zope 2.1.1 is released (announcement here).

Dell announces that it will offer Linux on its entire PowerEdge server line. Dell's systems will also ship with 90 days of Red Hat support.

The O'Reilly Network launches, though the truly big launch is to happen in January. (Announcement here).

Matra Datavision releases CASCADE under an open-source license. CASCADE is a massive library for geometric modeling and related tasks; Matra Datavision claims to have spent $75 million in its development. The license used is much like the GPL.

The Bazaar is held in New York City, attendance is light.

Miguel de Icaza wins the FSF Free Software Award for his work on GNOME.

Bastille Linux 1.0.0 is released; Bastille Linux is a project to make a highly secure distribution.

Development kernel 2.3.33 is released, and includes a warning that the 2.4 code freeze is coming.

The Kernel Journal is launched by Zack Brown, aims to be the definitive source for infomation on kernel patches. (Journal here).

Red Hat acquires German distributor Delix, the DLD distribution is to be "rolled into" Red Hat.

Debian 2.1r4 is released, fixing a number of security and year 2000 problems. (Announcement here).

Linux-Mandrake 6.1 is certified as year-2000 compliant. (Announcement here).

Storm Linux 2000 is released (announcement here).

KRASH (the unstable preview of KDE 2.0) is released (announcement here).

Zope and Mozilla announce a partnership which involves joint development in a number of areas. (Announcement here).

The first beta version of e-speak is released by HP E-speak is HP's answer to providing network services in the future - it is strongly oriented toward allowing services to be found, integrated, and accessed without the need to nail down protocols in advance. (Announcement here).

Xybernaut launches a wearable Linux system (announcement here).

Could there be any better demonstration of how passion can affect the economy? These stock market valuations are fueled in part by the belief of thousands of small investors that Linux is well on its way to world domination. Their willingness to pony up their cash is making that belief come true, provided Red Hat and VA Linux use their market clout wisely. -- Janelle Brown et al, Salon

Linuxcare acquires the Puffin Group, Prosa, and Cheek Consulting. They also obtain $32.5 million in venture capital.

Caldera, Red Hat, SuSE, and TurboLinux join the Trillian Project.

Bruce Perens becomes CEO of the Linux Capital Group, a venture capital company oriented toward startup Linux companies.

Applix acquires CoSource.com less than a week after its launch. (Announcement here).

The Brazilian legislature proposes a law to require the use of open source software in government.

Red Hat announces a stock split.

Eric Raymond starts on "The Art of Unix Programming." It's a book about what makes the Unix world unique; he seeks to write it with a lot of help from the net (web page here).

Sun pulls back from working with the standards process for Java with the European Computer Manufacturers' Association (ECMA), withholding key documents.

Sun again pre-announces the coming of the Java 2 platform for Linux, this time unveiling cooperative work with Inprise to produce a JDK 1.2.2. The press release triggers concern and upset with the Blackdown team, resulting in the departure of at least one team member (see LWN Coverage December 9th and December 16th).

Simultaneously, the Blackdown team announced another pre-release , JDK 1.2.2 RC3, considered a candidate for the first stable release of a JDK 1.2.X on Linux, almost exactly one year after Sun's JDK 1.2 started shipping.

Gimp 1.1 goes into final beta testing; the 1.2 stable release is expected shortly after the beginning of the year. (New feature list here).

Mozilla M12 is released, Mozilla reaches that "almost ready for alpha" stage.

Linux-Mandrake 7.0 is released in beta form. Among other things, includes a user-configurable security level.

GNUPC.com launches; they bring a twist to the Linux box business by shipping systems with no operating system installed; instead seven distributions are packed with the box. (Web site here).

Richard Stallman calls for a boycott of Amazon.com, following Amazon's use of software patents against a competitor. (Boycott call here).

The Real-Time Linux workshop is held in Vienna. (Report here).

The "DVD Copy Control Association" files suit against 72 defendants, all of whom had something to do with the reverse engineering of the DVD encryption scheme or committed some other offense, such as linking to information on the DVD crack. The initial attempt to get a restraining order against those posting or linking to the DeCSS code was denied by the courts.

The 1999 Debian GNU/Linux timeline is posted (timeline here).

id Software open sources Quake 1.