2005 Linux and free software timeline: March [LWN.net]

It's nice that patches are called "fix the frobnozzle gadget", but this analysis would be a lot easier if people would also label their patches "break the frobnozzle gadget" when that's what they do. Oh well.

--Andrew Morton

The 2.6.11 kernel is released (announcement).

The stable 2.6 kernel release tree is created as a way of quickly dealing with serious problems in 2.6 releases (article).

Linux Device Drivers, third edition is released (press release, online book). Linux Kernel Development, second edition is also released (review).

[T]his affair has highlighted the mandarin mechanisms of Europe at their baleful worst. The killer argument that won the day for software patents? "We are adopting the position for institutional reasons so as not to create a precedent which might have a consequence of creating future delays in other processes." Lay down your keyboards, ye knights of open source; you have lost your freedom in a noble cause.

--ZDNet

The European Council adopts software patents, seemingly in violation of its own procedural rules (FFII dispatch).

A formal security contact for the Linux kernel is established; there never was one before (article).

GNOME 2.10 is released (article).

Russ Nelson steps down as the head of the Open Source Initiative after criticism of some of his writings gets too loud.

The Debian Project considers relegating some architectures to "second class citizen" status (article).

The Mozilla Foundation announces that the Mozilla 1.8 release will not happen; development will focus on Firefox and Thunderbird instead (article).

Let's make all end user devices nonprogrammable. No one can connect to the Internet on a machine that creates code. If you want a computer to do programming, you would have to be licensed. We could license software companies to purchase programmable machines, which would be completely traceable along with the code created on them.

--CIO Magazine saves the net.

KDE 3.4 is released (announcement).

The Canopy Group dumps all of its SCO shares on Ralph Yarro as part of a settlement between the two parties.

Harald Welte warns thirteen companies about GPL non-compliance at CeBIT (press release).

Linspire Five-0 is released (press release).

Mandrakesoft moves to a one-year release cycle (roadmap). [Gentoo]

Slackware drops the GNOME desktop (ChangeLog).

Gentoo Linux 2005.0 is released (announcement).

Acrobat 7 is shown to phone home, much to the surprise of its users (article).

XFree86 4.5 is released; the world yawns.

Ubuntu offers collaboration with UserLinux; the UserLinux developers are not interested (offer).

<== February

Timeline home

April ==>

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