Obviously incorrect 2003 predictions

It's that time of year again. Traditionally the first LWN Weekly Edition of the year includes some predictions of what may happen in the near future. It is worthwhile, occasionally, to step back and think about what may be on the horizon, even though the real thing will, as always, include surprises that we are not able to anticipate.

Besides, real news tends to be scarce about now.

So, without further ado, here's a few Obviously Incorrect Predictions for the next year.

• Use of Linux in government will increase, especially outside of the U.S. Government, officials are increasingly concerned about security, long-term public access to records, costs, and the health of the local software industry. Free software offers help in all of those areas. Governments move slowly, but there will be significant steps toward governmental adoption of free software in the coming year.

• There will be high-profile desktop deployments, inside and outside of government. Linux as a desktop system is good enough for many users now, and is only getting better. As the number of success stories grows, more organizations will take the plunge and switch over to free software.

• There will be a direct patent challenge to one or more free software products. Thus far, there has been a great deal of nervousness about software patents, and people have occasionally had to code their way around patent issues. But there has been a distinct lack of actual infringement suits. Suing a free software user for patent infringement will be a powerful way of creating uncertainty throughout the community, however; 2003 may well be the year that this weapon gets used.

• It will be a watershed year in intellectual property law, but we are not foolish enough to try to predict which way it will go. It could be that, in 2003, copyright extension is struck down, the DMCA is revised and defanged, and the entertainment industry figures out that it needs to go after pirates instead of harassing its customers. Or the courts could be hostile, the CBDTPA could be passed, new encryption restrictions could surface, and "trusted computing systems" could come closer to reality.

  The first scenario is not out of the question. The copyright extension and ElcomSoft cases have done a lot to raise awareness of the excesses of American (and, increasingly, worldwide) intellectual property law. The costs (and vulnerabilities) of copy protection systems are increasingly apparent to all. We won the encryption battle, and we could well win this one too. But the forces behind the attempted intellectual property takeover will not give up easily. One way or the other, 2003 will be interesting.

• The 2.6 kernel will be released, but probably not until well into the second half of the year. Chances are the 2.7 development series will not open in 2003. Of course, all bets are off if Linus starts accepting new developments in 2.5, but chances are that will not happen.

• There will be a SourceForge crisis in 2003. SourceForge is operated by a company which is still bleeding cash, and which no longer has any real interest in free software. VA Software's investors and board are bound to question the value of the free SourceForge service. That service may well be cut back - or start demanding some sort of payment - in the coming year.

• UnitedLinux will not be enough to save all four of its participants; at least one of them will probably exit the distribution business by the end of the year. MandrakeSoft, which is in a cash crunch as of this writing, will pull through with support from its users and emerge as a viable (if smaller) company.

Those are our guesses for what this year holds for Linux and free software. These predictions are offered in the hope that they will be useful, but they come with NO WARRANTY regarding their fitness for any particular purpose or relation to any sort of reality.

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