The 2006 Linux and free software timeline: one big page

This is the "one big page" version of the LWN.net 2006 Linux and Free Software timeline; there is also an individual months view available.

January

We get in the situation where lots of people are sitting there with arms folded, complaining about lack of a new kernel release while nobody is actually working on the bugs. Nobody knows why this happens. -- Andrew Morton

Novell posts its Xgl code, bringing this work out from behind closed doors (announcement).

Linus releases 2.6.15, fifteen years to the day after he bought the machine on which he first developed Linux (announcement).

The Free Software Foundation announces Gnash, intended to be a free Flash media player. Someday. (Announcement).

Coverity receives a grant to perform audits of free software from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Another banner year has passed, with Linux once again proving its superiority in the area of crappy wireless (WiFi) support. Linux oldsters love the current state of wireless, because it hearkens back to the heady days of Yuri Gagarin, Sputnik and Linux kernel 0.99, when getting hardware to work under Linux required either engineering knowledge or luck (or both). -- Jeff Garzik

John Linville takes over the Linux wireless stack, bringing a new level of energy to Linux 802.11 development.

CERT releases its 2005 vulnerabilities list which purports to show that "Unix/Linux" has three times as many vulnerabilities as Windows (list, snide LWN response).

Novell releases AppArmor under the GPL (press release).

Mono is added to Fedora Core thanks to a promise of protection from the Open Invention Network.

Microsoft's FAT filesystem patents are upheld - for a while (article).

The Linux kernel is under the GPL version 2. Not anything else. Some individual files are licenceable under v3, but not the kernel in general. And quite frankly, I don't see that changing. -- Linus Torvalds

The first GPLv3 draft is released (LWN analysis).

The "Digital Content Protection Act" enters the U.S. Congress; among other things, it would have enshrined "customary historic use" of media, giving a veto power over any new technologies (article).

The ghost of software patents begins to stir in Europe, though, by the end of the year, it remains just a ghost.

Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell wins the 2005 Free Software Award (announcement).

The Rockbox iPod port produces audio (announcement).

OSDL accepts a set of proposals from the kernel development community on how it can better serve that community (proposals).

SeaMonkey 1.0 is released, keeping the old Mozilla suite alive (info page).

The ReactOS project suspends development for a code audit among fears of contamination from proprietary code (announcement).

February

But some people will still say "But couldn't you have discussed it with the community before doing it?" No, we couldn't. If we had, it would either not have happened, or it would have sucked. It's inevitable. It's not a problem with the GNOME community, it's a problem with communities in general. The wisdom of crowds only works in situations where there are clear right and wrong answers. -- Dan Winship, Novell

Kernel Traffic author Zack Brown calls it quits after seven years of publishing.

Richard Stallman refuses to endorse the Creative Commons, claiming that some CC licenses work against freedom (interview).

Debian founder Ian Murdock becomes CTO of the Free Standards Group (announcement).

An alpha Second Life client for Linux becomes available; unfortunately it is not free software.

Oracle acquires Sleepycat Software, gaining control over the Berkeley DB database (press release).

In the world we're living in right now, no one can make small, cheap consumer electronics without our software. Our pre-market clout, our use as a raw material of manufacturing, is now large enough to bring an industry coalition into being. -- Eben Moglen

The KDE Project elects its first technical working group (announcement).

Levanta and OSDL produce an "analyst" report on total cost of ownership; surprisingly, Linux comes out on top (article).

The Linux Professional Institute certifies its 30,000th Linux administrator (announcement).

The Mare.D Linux-based worm makes the rounds but doesn't get very far (article).

Couldn't Novell have spent their money on making SELinux easier to use? No, Novell chooses to split the user and developer community. I am not sure what their goals are, but I feel this hurts Linux and the open source movement. -- Dan Walsh doesn't like AppArmor

Openwall GNU/*/Linux 2.0 is released (announcement).

Red Hat releases AIGLX, a competing GL-accelerated extension to the X Window System (home).

Harald Welte complains that he can't keep up with GPL violations, there are simply too many of them (complaint).

OSDL names kernel developer James Bottomley to its board, fulfilling one of the promises made in January (press release).

Gentoo Linux 2006.0 is released.

The first dvdrtools release is made; it is a 100% free fork of cdrtools (announcement).

gcc 4.1 is released (changelog).

March

The fear is that a round of buyouts could undermine the ethos of open source. Many coders volunteer their time, spending nights and weekends testing bugs and writing patches because they see themselves as part of an important, grassroots movement. Will that motivation remain if they're just helping to fill the coffers of Oracle or other tech giants? -- Business Week

Coverity releases its first results from its open source project audit (press release).

The proposed acquisition of SourceFire comes under governmental scrutiny in the U.S. as a result of security concerns.

The Ubuntu "Dapper Drake" release is delayed six weeks to better help make a distribution which can be supported for five years (rationale).

Wikipedia hits 1,000,000 articles (press release).

Mandriva reports a €590,000 quarterly loss and lays off staff - including founder Gaël Duval (quarterly results).

Oh, and women don't fall for the "I hack kernel stuff" line. I was lied to. -- Mariusz Mazur

Debian stable release manager Martin Schulze quits in frustration over his dealings with the rest of the project (goodbye letter).

The VMI virtualization interface is proposed as a way to support multiple virtualization technologies under Linux (proposal).

The first Xara Xtreme source code release happens (Article).

The OpenBSD project starts a fund-raising drive, noting that OpenSSH development could be threatened (release).

Red Hat reports on one year of RHEL 4 security responses, something few distributors do (report).

The 2.6.16 kernel is released (announcement).

Open source has an unprofessional appearance, and the community needs to be more business savvy in order to start to make inroads in areas traditionally dominated by commercial software vendors. -- Peter Quinn

The OSDL technical advisory board is launched (announcement).

Fedora Core 5 is release (announcement).

Mandriva One is released (press release).

Gaël Duval launches the Ulteo project and announces his intent to sue Mandriva (weblog posting).

The Mozilla Foundation announces plans to donate funds to the community (ZDNet article).

Daniel Wallace loses his suit against the FSF; he claimed that it was anti-competitive (press release).

OSDL launches a "fellowship fund" to support open source developers (press release).

April

In return for all the free development work they get, it does seem to me that it's part of Red Hat's job to shoulder risks like these -- and that Red Hat hasn't held up its end. AVI. Quicktime. ASF. MPEG. DVD playback. Flash. Java. These are *not optional* in 2006, any more than the ability to read Microsoft Word files in a word processor is optional... -- Eric Raymond

Eric Raymond takes Fedora to task for not supporting DVDs and proprietary codecs (rant).

OpenWRT revokes Sveasoft's license, alleging GPL violations (article).

Red Hat announces that there will be no Fedora Foundation after all, citing the company's need to keep control over the project (announcement).

The SCO Group fails to obtain the Unix Systems Laboratories trademark (Groklaw).

It's so hard to write a graphics driver that open-sourcing it would not help. -- Andrew Fear, Nvidia software product manager

The Software Freedom Conservancy is launched (press release).

The Linux Professional Institute adds Ubuntu certification (announcement).

Kaspersky Labs announces a cross-platform virus alleged to infect both Windows and Linux systems (announcement). The world fails to end.

Noting that at the outset of this case or prior to its filing, it was expressed to the media and others that SCO possessed evidence regarding the misappropriation of source code. At this point, don't you have enough evidence to go forward in that regard or, to be candid about it, does it constitute fishing at this point? -- Judge Wells

Kubuntu.de goes on protest demanding more resources from Canonical (announcement).

The wireless networking summit is held in Portland (report).

Anthony Towns is elected Debian Project Leader (results).

Python 3000 development begins (announcement).

Red Hat acquires JBoss for $350 million (press release).

I have come to a conclusion that every new release of software is distinctly worse than the other. Why? It's because the fat lady can't sing. There's a natural tendency to add stuff. Suddenly it [becomes] like a very fat person-uses most of their energy to move the fat. We've gotten to the point where we have to completely rethink. -- Nicholas Negroponte

Debian adds support for the AMD64 architecture for the upcoming "etch" release (announcement).

The free JMRI project is sued for patent infringement (article).

The Freespire distribution launches, being a no-cost version of Linspire (press release).

Scott McNealy steps down as Sun's CEO, making the way for Jonathan Schwartz.

May

I don't think we can "relax" our firewall implementation and retain trust. -- Rusty Russell

The Linux Power Management Summit happens (report).

OpenBSD 3.9 is released (announcement).

PC-BSD 1.0 is released (announcement).

Coverity finds a major X.org security hole (press release).

I believe the 2.6 kernel is slowly getting buggier. It seems we're adding bugs at a higher rate than we're fixing them. -- Andrew Morton

The US Federal Aviation Administration saves $15 million by switching to Linux (press release).

Devicescape releases its 802.11 stack under the GPL (press release).

The OpenDocument format becomes an ISO standard (press release).

SUSE Linux 10.1 is released (announcement).

You can fight back against this trend by only using software that respects your boundaries. Boycott companies that don't honestly serve their customers, that don't disclose their alliances, that treat users like marketing assets. Use open-source software -- software created and owned by users, with no hidden agendas, no secret alliances and no back-room marketing deals. -- Bruce Schneier

SGI files for bankruptcy protection.

Novell announces its "device driver process," essentially a backporting service for vendors (press release).

Sun changes the licensing for Java making it a little more distributable but not free (yet) (press release).

Kororaa Linux suspends work to review GPL violation allegations related to the packaging of binary-only drivers (announcement).

XM Radio is sued by the record labels for allowing users to record transmissions (EFF dispatch).

Debian developers begin to wonder how Java was accepted despite issues with the new license (article).

In fact, I was so unhappy about being forced by the RTSJ specification to do this insane thing that I wanted to make sure that if it were ever used, it would set a TAINT flag to warn people that just about anything unsane could have happened, and the system's stability was at the mercy of the competence of Java application programmers. -- Ted Ts'o

Greg KH releases the first Linux Driver Development Kit so we can have one just like Windows does (kit).

X11R7.1 is released; this is the first modular X release (announcement).

Intel donates a Swing/AWT implementation to the Harmony project (announcement).

The Open Invention Network acquires three new patents to be used in the defense of free software (Groklaw).

The European Commission says explicitly that software cannot be patented (FFII dispatch).

The FSF launches DefectiveByDesign.org to fight DRM (announcement).

Ubuntu is gaining a ton of momentum. It is arguably one of the most important--if not the most important--Linux distro out there. -- Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz

Ubuntu announces a SPARC "Niagara" version of its upcoming 6.06 LTS distribution (press release).

Parts of the Forgent JPEG patent are thrown out in court (press release).

The first FreedomHEC conference happens in Seattle, next to the WinHEC event (web site).

June

I'd be wary of pursuing just the "women in GNOME" issue, because many of the same things put off far more than just women. Running around shouting "pants off" is not, for example, very compatible with the Japanese cultural expectations. -- Alan Cox

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is released with a promise of support for five years (announcement).

Red Hat launches Mugshot (site).

Google Earth for Linux is released under a free-beer license (article).

Libranet Linux shuts down, several months after the death of its founder.

Ethereal becomes Wireshark after its lead developer changes jobs (announcement).

These movements are at their most efficient while building hidden information plumbing layers, such as Web servers. They are hopeless when it comes to producing fine user interfaces or user experiences. If the code that ran the Wikipedia user interface were as open as the contents of the entries, it would churn itself into impenetrable muck almost immediately. -- Jaron Lanier

The first working OLPC model is demonstrated.

The 2.6.17 kernel is released (announcement).

The Linux filesystems workshop is held (report).

The Taiwanese government mandates Linux compatibility for desktop systems (ZDNet article)

Novell names Ron Hovsepian its new CEO, replacing Jack Messman (press release).

Most of the SCO Groups claims against IBM are thrown out by the court (order).

July

Digging in your eye-sockets with a fondue fork is strictly considered to be bad for your health, and seven out of nine optometrists are dead set against the practice. So in order to avoid a lot of blind git users, please apply this patch. -- Linus Torvalds

FireStar sues Red Hat for patent infringement in code acquired with JBoss (article).

Microsoft announces initial OpenDocument support in the form of a translator project (press release).

The Software Freedom Law Center pronounces OpenDocument safe for use in free software (press release). But they didn't actually look for patent problems.

GnuCash 2.0.0 is released ending a long wait (announcement, review).

I've had the misfortune of talking to a lot of different IP lawyers over the years about this topic, and every one that I've talked to all agree that there is no way that anyone can create a Linux kernel module, today, that can be closed source. It just violates the GPL due to fun things like derivative works and linking and other stuff. -- Greg Kroah-Hartman, OLS keynote

Trolltech becomes a public company (press release).

The 2006 Linux Kernel Summit is held in Ottawa (report).

SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 is released (press release).

Fedora Legacy ends support for Fedora Core 1 and 2, almost nobody notices the difference (announcement).

India declines to participate in the One Laptop Per Child project.

The GPL license and the Free Software Foundation make sense to me if I assume that the purpose of the GPL license is to force the redistribution of all source code and to prevent commerce that does not include the unencumbered redistribution of all source code. The FSF recommends that you assign your copyrights to them, so they can insure your software "freedom." If the FSF succeeds, all source code will be GPL licensed and controlled by the Free Software Foundation; and all Laws regarding software patents and copyrights will be rendered ineffective. -- MEPIS comes unwillingly

The MEPIS distribution releases full source to address GPL compliance concerns (press release).

The second GPLv3 draft is posted (draft). The first LGPLv3 draft is also posted.

Pervasive software bails out of the PostgreSQL business, stating that it cannot compete with the available community support (open letter).

AMD and ATI announce their intention to merge.

Marcelo Tosatti retires from 2.4 maintenance having managed releases 2.4.16 through 2.4.33 (announcement).

The Extremadura (Spain) government decides to move to Linux (announcement).

August

fwiw, I recently took a position with Google. -- Andrew Morton releases 2.6.18-rc3-mm1

The 64 Studio distribution launches (announcement).

Software in the Public Interest elects a new board (announcement).

SCO stock falls to $2.28/share - below its pre-lawsuit value.

We now think the benefits of accelerating innovation, opening new markets and opportunities, and fostering creativity that the open source model brings now outweigh the risks to compatibility. These risks are real, but at Sun, we believe that the wisdom of the community has evolved to where the market and developer community itself will act to demand compatibility as a bedrock feature of any implementations based on Java technology. -- Sun Microsystems thinks we have grown up

Sun announces plans to open-source Java at last.

EnterpriseDB gets $20 million in venture capital for its PostgreSQL-related business (press release).

Freespire 1.0 is released (press release).

Distributors start to move away from cdrtools in response to a licensing mess there (article).

Novell's "community" distribution is renamed openSUSE (press release).

Fedora engages in a licensing audit to get all non-free code out of Core.

RealPlayer and MySQL obtain Linux Standard Base certification; they are the first applications to do so (press release).

Fast forward a year plus, and here we are. We're in a position where we have, essentially, forked RPM -- and no one is willing to admit it. No one is willing to take ownership of what we've done. -- Greg DeKoenigsberg

An ill-advised X.org patch breaks Ubuntu 6.06, not quite the long-term support users had in mind (Shuttleworth apology).

NetBSD founder Charles Hannum questions the future of the project (posting).

Gentoo Linux 2006.1 is released (announcement).

The gNewSense distribution launches as a version of Ubuntu with binary blobs removed (press release).

September

Linus Torvalds never supported the Free Software movement. He sort of accidentally drifted into making a contribution to the Free Software community, but not because he ever supported our goals. And so he has actually said that he is against our aims of defending freedom for all users. What can you do? -- Richard Stallman

Debian's Alioth server is compromised (announcement).

SanDisk MP3 players are seized at a trade show in Berlin as the result of a dispute over software patent royalties (BBC).

A proposed update to the Creative Commons licenses runs into trouble resulting from its anti-DRM provisions (article).

The "Citizendium" launches as a fork of Wikipedia; progress since then is slow.

The 2.6.18 kernel is released (announcement).

Finally, we recognise that defining what constitutes DRM abuse is essentially political in nature and as such, while we may argue forcefully for our political opinions, we may not suborn or coerce others to go along with them. Therefore, attempting to write these type of restrictions into GPLv3 and then relicense all FSF code under it is tantamount to co-opting the work of all prior contributions into the service of the FSF's political ends... -- Several kernel developers

A poll of kernel developers reveals almost universal opposition to GPLv3 (results).

The Debian "Dunc-Tank" launches as an effort to raise money to pay Debian developers (announcement).

Freenode founder Rob Levin dies in a bicycling accident (notice).

The Linux-ready firmware developer kit launches; the work is sponsored by Intel (announcement).

Mozilla Corp. tells Debian to stop using the Firefox trademark; Debian responds by switching to Iceweasel (article).

Mandriva Linux 2007 is released (announcement).

Ultimately, we need to recognize that Linux is a 15-year-old kernel and that there will be another technical development to supersede it eventually. I can't say what that will be, but I think the best chance of mobilizing individual contribution to it would be to use GPL 3. -- Bruce Perens

A court in Germany upholds the GPL against D-Link (announcement).

Eric Raymond joins the Freespire "Leadership Board," having found a distribution more to his liking (announcement).

The first draft of version 2 of the GNU Free Documentation License is released (announcement).

BusyBox maintainer Rob Landley quits as the result of a GPLv3 dispute in which Bruce Perens stated his intent to fork the project (article).

October

Every time a Red Hat executive asks "how many Fedora users are out there?" and we answer "oh, somewhere between 100k and a few million," we make it *that* much more difficult to defend Fedora from bad Red Hat decisions. -- Greg DeKoenigsberg

Slackware 11.0 is released (announcement).

Portland 1.0, a set of common interfaces for GNOME and KDE, is released (announcement).

BayStar reveals that Microsoft was behind the funding of the SCO Group in 2003 (Groklaw).

The Kororaa distribution stops shipping proprietary kernel modules after being accused of violating the GPL (announcement).

You would sacrifice freedom hoping to gain it back at a later date. Has that retarded American ethos really now penetrated all the way into the core of the Linux community? The last thing we expected was a bunch of woosy traitors in our midst! -- Theo de Raadt

OpenBSD leader Theo de Raadt attacks the One Laptop Per Child project for developing device drivers under non-disclosure agreements (article).

Hans Reiser is arrested on suspicion of murder (SFGate).

The Debian Project votes to release Etch on time despite lingering firmware issues (results). The project also declines to recall its leader.

Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth becomes the first patron of KDE (announcement).

The Linux Standard Base developer network launches (announcement).

Fundamentally, though, this is still free software in a proprietary wrapper. The pricing may be different, but it's still old-school thinking. I don't think anybody who will consider jumping to Ubuntu from Red Hat will pause very long on the Oracle option. -- Mark Shuttleworth

Oracle launches a support service for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (press release).

Fedora Core 6 is released (announcement).

Firefox 2.0 is released (press release).

The SCO v. IBM trial is pushed back to September 2007 but we can look forward to dispositive motions in March (Groklaw).

IBM launches a patent suit against Amazon (Reuters).

The first Emacs 22 pretest release happens (announcement).

Ubuntu 6.10 ("Edgy Eft") is released (announcement).

November

Why would a company that depends on goodwill from a distributed development community spend so much time bragging on how they have managed to transgress the community's cooperation norms, and the spirit of the key legal charter that reflects those norms, without violating the letter of that charter? Most people who find loopholes just exploit them quietly without putting up the "Open Letter: Neener, Neener, We Found a Loophole" and "FAQ on the Loophole we Found (Neener, Neener)" web pages. -- Don Marti

Novell and Microsoft announce their deal involving patent payments in both directions (press release).

Josh Triplett becomes the maintainer for sparse, the static analysis tool written by Linus Torvalds (article).

gNewSense 1.0 is released with an endorsement from the Free Software Foundation (press release).

Adobe donates its ActionScript Virtual Machine code to Mozilla as free software (press release).

Forgent stops asserting its JPEG patent claims (Groklaw).

Google pledges to donate $20,000 to the Samba project - every year (announcement).

In a sense you could say anybody who has got Linux in their data center today sort of has an undisclosed balance sheet liability, because it's not just Microsoft patents. Because of the way open-source works, there's nobody who's been able to do patent coverage or patent indemnification behind that. -- Steve Ballmer

The OpenMoko phone is announced; it is Linux-powered and runs nearly all free software (press release).

Sun announces plans to release Java under the GPL, finally (press release).

Open Firmware is released under the BSD license (article).

The OpenBSD Atheros driver gets a clean bill of health from the Software Freedom Law Center (announcement).

The Fedora Project holds a summit, deciding to merge Core and Extras and extend the support period, among other things (wiki).

The first OLPC beta-1 systems arrive (photos).

Ubuntu announces plans to install proprietary drivers by default in the upcoming Feisty Fawn distribution (report).

The Freedom Task Force launches as a way to encourage GPL compliance in Europe (press release).

It's one of those rare "perfect" kernels. So if it doesn't happen to compile with your config (or it does compile, but then does unspeakable acts of perversion with your pet dachshund), you can rest easy knowing that it's all your own d*mn fault, and you should just fix your evil ways. -- Linus Torvalds

Red Hat announces plans to move to the New York Stock Exchange (press release).

The 2.6.19 kernel is released (announcement).

The Free Ryzom Campaign launches in an attempt to buy a free multiplayer online game for the community (announcement).

December

The Free Ryzom campaign represents a unique opportunity for the free software movement and the emerging free gaming field. A fully free MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) engine and client/server architecture would allow the development of a myriad of universes, each one evolving its own philosophy and unique content - but sharing in general technical improvements. -- the Free Software Foundation kicks in $60,000

Mozilla agrees to work more closely with Linux distributors on Firefox releases (article).

The third Desktop Architects' Meeting happens in Portland (article).

Judge Kimball reaffirms the ruling throwing out most of SCO's claims for lack of evidence (Groklaw).

OSDL lays off much of its staff; the remainder is to focus on legal issues.

Novell states its intention to implement OpenXML support for OpenOffice.org (press release).

OpenSUSE 10.2 is released (announcement).

If people take our code, they'd better behave according to our rules. But we shouldn't have to behave according to the RIAA rules just because we _listen_ to their music. Similarly, nobody should be forced to behave according to our rules just because they _use_ our system. -- Linus Torvalds

The kernel developers seriously consider banning proprietary modules but back off in the end.

The FSF launches BadVista.org to highlight its complaints with Microsoft's new operating system (press release).

The Software Freedom Law Center argues against software patents in the U.S. Supreme Court (press release).

Red Hat announces an initiative to support RPM and retake control of this important tool (announcement).

Linux 2.6.20-rc3 ...because it's always a good idea to cut a release *before* you go out to party and get drunk. -- Linus Torvalds finishes the year

Guido van Rossum worries about the Python 3000 process which appears to have departed from the course he had in mind (message).

The Free Ryzom Campaign fails in its attempt to purchase the Ryzom source (announcement).

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