2004 Linux Timeline: December [LWN.net]

We need to be be achieving higher-quality major releases than we did in 2.6.8 and 2.6.9. Really the only tool we have to ensure this is longer stabilisation periods.

-- Andrew Morton

Sun Microsystems submits the Common Development and Distribution License for OSI approval; still no word on what might be released under this license (license text).

Xandros Desktop 3 is released (announcement).

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 is released (highlights).

SCO states it never meant to question the validity of the GPL (filings).

PalmSource acquires China MobileSoft as part of a plan to put PalmOS on Linux (press release).

The recent 2.6 Linux production kernel now shipping in operating system products from Novell and other major Linux software companies contains 985 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code, well below the industry average for commercial enterprise software.

-- Coverity press release

The Linux Core Consortium seeks Debian's participation in developing its core distribution.

IDC predicts a $35 billion Linux market by 2008 (press release).

Firefox 1.0 runs up 10 million downloads in one month (announcement).

SCO's suit against DaimlerChrysler is dismissed in its entirety; SCO must pay DC's legal costs if it decides to refile (court order).

Slackware's Patrick Volkerding returns home, seemingly on the road to recovery (notice).

The suggestion that users of OS software are more likely to be sued for patent infringement than those that use proprietary software, like Microsoft's does not appear supported by actual experience. It is interesting to note that while Microsoft has had several dozen patent infringement lawsuits filed against it in the past few years, none have been reported against Linux, the most popular of all OS programs.

-- Pillsbury Winthrop LLP

The long-promised Fedora CVS repository opens (announcement). [Gimp]

KDE 3.3 is admitted to the Debian sarge release (release update).

GIMP 2.2.0 is released (release notes).

The EU Council drops the draft patent directive after Poland makes it clear that it will not go along with it.

Mandrakesoft raises €3 million in equity financing (announcement).

The 2.6.10 kernel is released (announcement).

<== November

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2004 Linux Timeline: December

Posted Dec 30, 2004 15:22 UTC (Thu) by TxtEdMacs (guest, #5983) [Link]

Regarding the downloads of FireFox, it would be more accurate to state either 10 million downloads in just over a month's time or was rapidly approaching a 10 million downloads in only one month.

I do not remember the exact figure, but the one month's figure was less than I expected when I saw a similar headline. It was about 9.6 million for either the 8th or 9th of December.

Here is one citation from the 12th of Dec. announcing reaching the 10 million mark: http://news.com.com/Firefox+surpasses+10+million+download...

So far I have not retrieved the number on the one month anniversary date - I believe, however, I read the exact number off the Mozilla site.

However, this one claims the total was reached in 31 days: http://forums.winxpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=12398

That just was not what I actually saw on the 9th of December.

2004 Linux Timeline: December

Posted Jan 14, 2005 1:48 UTC (Fri) by cloricus (guest, #27235) [Link]

I cannot agree with the assumption that because ten million wasn't downloaded from the official site that the target wasn't reached. Many use a RPM/Deb based distributions and thus rather get their programs from sources provided by the distro developers or others. I alone can account for just over thirty downloads and installs that weren't from the official site yet were installed on separate users computers. (And are still in use.) So given that there were many places and ways to get version one of FireFox I think it is fair to assume that the gap was closed by users not downloading from the official site.