2004 Linux Timeline: October [LWN.net]

The bnetd emulator had limited commercial purpose because it was free and available to anyone who wanted to copy and use the program.

-- bnetd ruling

A U.S. District Court finds the bnetd developers guilty of DMCA violations (coverage).

Sun pays Kodak $92 million in a software patent settlement.

Red Hat buys the remains of Netscape from AOL (press release).

Turbolinux 10 Server is released (announcement).

Red Hat starts buying back $100 million in stock (press release).

My computer is how I keep in touch with my family and friends, as much as the place I do my work. It's not a cold, plastic thing, it's my connection to the world of the people I care about. We were looking for visual ways to communicate that and realised that there was no way to do it without showing people. Diverse people, of different shapes and sizes, being people.

-- Mark Shuttleworth

Novell says it may use its patents to defend others accused of patent infringement with open source code (policy statement).

Microsoft's patent on the FAT filesystem is overturned following a challenge by the Public Patent Foundation (press release).

Ubuntu 4.10 is released (announcement).

Jeff Merkey attempts to buy a kernel GPL exception for $50,000; the copyright holders were not impressed (offer).

MontaVista posts a "realtime Linux patch set" which sets off a major round of realtime and latency reduction hacking (announcement).

Michal Zalewski easily crashes all free web browsers with a random HTML script (report).

The 2.6.9 kernel is released (announcement).

The bottom line is that idealistic communes cannot last for the long haul. The open source movement may avoid these difficulties for outside contributors who work for credit and glory. But how do the insiders, such as Linus Torvalds, cash out of the business that they built? And in the interim, how do they attract capital and personnel needed to expand the business? Traditional companies have evolved their capital structures for good reason.

-- Richard Epstein, Financial Times.

BusyBox 1.0 is released, marking one of the longest paths to 1.0 ever.

SCO announces that it will launch an anti-Groklaw web site. We're still waiting.

The Mozilla Foundation starts raising funds for a New York Times ad promoting Firefox.

A fake Red Hat security update spams the net but finds few takers (don't apply this).

Lexmark loses its DMCA suit; making interoperable printer cartridges is not a crime.

<== September

Timeline home

November ==>

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