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

And I have seen _lots_ of total crap work that was based on specs. It's _the_ single worst way to write software, because it by definition means that the software was written to match theory, not reality.

--Linus Torvalds

Battle for Wesnoth 1.0 is released, LWN editorial productivity drops (article).

Microsoft's FAT patents are rejected by the U.S. Patent Office.

Don Marti steps down as editor of the Linux Journal (goodbye).

Sun promises not to enforce any patents against OpenDocument - version 1.0, at least (statement).

This announcement represents further validation of the open source movement. The beauty of open source software and the GPL license is freedom. As with all MySQL code, InnoDB is provided under the GPL license, meaning that users have complete freedom to use, develop, and modify the code base. We are pleased to see even broader industry acceptance of open source database technology.

--MySQL's Marten Mickos makes lemonade

Oracle acquires Innobase, maker of the InnoDB engine used by MySQL (press release).

The Better Desktop initiative launches (press release).

The Nessus security scanner is relicensed and is no longer free software (roadmap).

SUSE Linux 10.0 is released (announcement).

Ubuntu 5.10 ("breezy") is released (announcement).

A release plan for Debian 'etch' is posted; it calls for a release in December, 2006 (plan).

Bob Young departs Red Hat (article).

Oh, and at least one major distro has been served with legal papers due to them shipping closed source kernel drivers, and more are on the way. That's the direction some developers are taking. Others, myself included, [are] taking the technical way and just making it so damn hard to write and ship a closed kernel module, that they will just give up eventually. Combine that with the EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL() stuff in the kernel, and I give it about 1-2 more years before it's just technically impossible to write such a module.

--Greg Kroah-Hartman

The EFF decodes watermarks added by color printers (article).

Mandriva Linux 2006 is released.

Minix 3 is released (article).

OSDL's Mobile Linux Initiative launches (press release).

Microsoft posts a new set of "shared source" licenses, two of which even might qualify as free.

MySQL 5.0 is released (announcement).

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is released (announcement).

The Galeon developers give up; they will create Epiphany extensions instead (report).

Open Source Risk Management offers "compliance insurance" for companies afraid of violating the GPL (article).

Larry [McVoy] conveyed his very legitimate worry that a fast, stable open source project such as Mercurial poses a threat to his business, and that he considered it "unacceptable" that an employee of a customer should work on a free project that he sees as competing. To avoid any possible perception of conflict, I have volunteered to Larry that as long as I continue to use the commercial version of BitKeeper, I will not contribute to the development of Mercurial.

--Bryan O'Sullivan

(source)

Mark Russinovich discovers the Sony rootkit, starting all kinds of fun (weblog).

The Analog Content Security Preservation Act is proposed as yet another broadcast flag effort (EFF).

The 2.6.14 kernel is released (announcement).

The OpenEZX project launches to coordinate hacking on the Linux-powered Motorola A780 cellphone (project).

Wine 0.9 is released, declared ready for commercial testing (announcement).

<== September

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