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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.

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