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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.

February <==

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