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

The GPL purports to have freedom at its core, but it imposes on its users a rather predatory obligation to disgorge all their IP back to the wealthiest nation in the world, the United States, where the GPL originated.

--Sun president Jonathan Schwartz

BitMover pulls the free-beer version of BitKeeper, forcing kernel developers to seek an alternative (article).

Mandrakesoft becomes Mandriva.

Fedora Core 2 transitions to the Fedora Legacy Project, which is unsure about how to handle hundreds of unresolved bug reports (article).

Ubuntu 5.04 is released (announcement).

Mandriva Limited Edition 2005 is released (announcement).

My second plan is to make somebody else so fired up about the problem that I can just sit back and take patches. That's really what I'm best at. Sitting here, in the (rain) on the patio, drinking a foofy tropical drink, and pressing the "apply" button. Then I take all the credit for my incredible work.

--Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds releases the first version of git, the core of a new source code management system (announcement). This release happens two days after the BitKeeper announcement.

Branden Robinson becomes the Debian project leader (election results).

PostgreSQL 8.0.2 is released; it features a complete replacement of its cache management algorithm to avoid an IBM Patent (announcement, patent info).

Andrew Tridgell reveals how he reverse-engineered BitKeeper; it turns out the BitKeeper server has a "help" command (article).

We are not in any way opposed to the commercial use of Free and Open Source Software and there is no legal risk of using GPL licensed software in commercial products. But vendors have to comply with the license terms, just like they would have to with any other software license agreement.

--Harald Welte

A German court grants an injunction against Fortinet as a result of Fortinet's violation of the GPL (press release).

Kernel prepatch 2.6.12-rc3 is released; this is the first prepatch made with git - less than three weeks after the loss of BitKeeper (announcement).

SUSE Linux Professional 9.3 is released (announcement).

The city of Munich chooses Debian for its Linux conversion.

The free software movement is the heir to the free-speech movements which started in Europe centuries ago; we are at the forefront of what has been a very long and difficult fight for freedom. The difference is that this time we win.

--Eben Moglen (paraphrased)

USENIX honors Miguel de Icaza and Mattias Ettrich for their free desktop work (press release).

GCC 4.0 is released.

The Debian Project decides that the "sarge" release will not include the amd64 architecture (article).

The Fedora Legacy project decides not to support the x86-64 architecture (article).

<== March

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May ==>

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