The 2009 Linux and free software timeline

October

X.org releases xorg-server 1.7 (announcement, LWN coverage)

Though the use of cookies and respective protocols in computer science are well documented we will not cover security aspects, notably related to excessive accumulative effects of consuming large amounts of cookies, rather we will focus on their creation, deployment, assessment and finally their consumption and the positive impact on the real-time Linux community we were able to observe.

-- M. Gleixner, M. McGuire [PDF] from the Real Time Linux Workshop

Gentoo celebrates its tenth birthday by releasing a Gentoo Linux 10.0 LiveDVD. (announcement)

OpenSSH also celebrates its tenth anniversary with the release of OpenSSH 5.3. (announcement)

TurboGears releases version 1.1 of the Python-based web framework. (announcement)

The Real Time Linux Workshop is held in Dresden, Germany. (LWN coverage)

Amarok 2.2 "Sunjammer" is released. (KDE.News report)

Nokia releases the N900 based on Maemo 5 and quite hackable. (LWN report from the Maemo Summit)

The problem? They are KILLING us. I'm not talking about market share, I'm talking about my recent converts from Fedora to Ubuntu. I haven't had to do a single thing to my wife's computer since I put Ubuntu on there except setup my printer. With Fedora I was on it almost daily.

-- Mike McGrath of Fedora/Red Hat

GDB 7.0 is released with reverse debugging, Python scripting, and more. (announcement)

CentOS 5.4 is released. (announcement)

OpenBSD 4.6 is released. (announcement)

Darl McBride is terminated as SCO CEO and as the longtime "face" of SCO's litigation strategy. (Groklaw coverage)

The Linux Kernel Summit is held in Asia, specifically Tokyo, for the first time. It is co-located with the Japan Linux Symposium. (LWN Kernel Summit coverage)

X11R7.5 is released with multi-pointer X, RANDR enhancements, and more. (announcement, Peter Hutterer's disambiguation) [SeaMonkey logo]

SeaMonkey 2.0 is released—the heir to Netscape Communicator as an all-in-one internet suite. (announcement)

Version 2.6 of the LLVM compiler is released with the first release of the Clang C/Objective-C compiler, better code generation, and more. (announcement)

But I'm going to want a strand of hair from the engineer responsible for that design, for my voodoo doll.

-- David Woodhouse

Word processor AbiWord releases version 2.8 with collaboration support, "true" SVG support, and more. (announcement, LWN review)

Ubuntu "Karmic Koala" (9.10) is released. (announcement, LWN review)

November

Mandriva 2010.0 is released. (release notes, LWN review)

A moratorium turns Python's conservativeness up to 11. If Python already has a reputation for being conservative in the features it accepts — and I think it does — then a moratorium risks giving the impression that Python has become the language of choice for old guys sitting on their porch yelling at the damn kids to get off the lawn.

-- Steven D'Aprano

One Laptop Per Child cancels the XO-2, opting instead for an ARM-based XO-1.75 in the near term and an XO-3 in 2012. (OLPC News report)

Python declares a moratorium on syntax and grammar changes through the 2.7 and 3.2 releases and possibly longer. (LWN coverage)

GNOME plans for a 3.0 release in September 2010 and 2.30 in March. (announcement)

Google announces a new systems programming language: Go—released under a BSD license. (web site, language tutorial)

Cavium Networks acquires MontaVista Software one of the first commercial embedded Linux vendors. (press release)

That spanned 5 files, 6 indirections and all that to open and fgets the contents of a file. And we still are doing an indirect call. All this work and jumping around when all I wanted is to have a function that can translate a PEM (NOT in a file!!!) cert into a X509 structure. But between the million or so functions nothing handy like that exists; or so I suspect but since there are no docs I really have to guess.

-- OpenSSL is written by monkeys

A fundamental flaw is found in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, which allows man-in-the-middle plaintext injection attacks. (LWN coverage)

openSUSE 11.2 is released with KDE 4.3, GNOME 2.28, OpenOffice.org 3.1, and more. (announcement, LWN review)

Fedora 12 is released with rpmdelta support, virtualization improvements, and more. (announcement, LWN conversation with Paul Frields)

Knoppix 6.2 is released with kernel 2.6.31.6, X.org 7.4, and more. (The H article)

The Linux kernel doesn't have all caps structures, we don't like to shout at our programmers, it makes them grumpy. Instead, we like to soothe them with small, rounded letters, which puts them in a nice, compliant mood, and makes them more productive and happier, allowing them more fulfilling lives overall.

-- Greg Kroah-Hartman

Google releases the Chromium OS source under a BSD license. (announcement)

Fedora 12 initially ships with a security hole by default allowing unprivileged users to install signed packages from signed repositories without requiring a password. (LWN coverage)

KDE repositions its "brand" by separating the KDE software into different groups: KDE Plasma Desktop, KDE Platform, KDE Applications, and KDE Software Compilation. (KDE.News report)

Vector drawing program Inkscape releases version 0.47, which has been massively overhauled from previous versions. (release notes)

FreeBSD 8.0 is released. (announcement, LWN review)

Linux Mint 8 "Helena" is released. (announcement)

December

People expect intelligent beings, whether organic or inorganic, to have some degree of common sense. Despite the decades of research sacrificed at the altar of artificial intelligence, computers remain almost completely devoid of common sense.

-- Paul McKenney

Qt 4.6 is released with multi-touch and gesture support, new graphical capabilities, more platforms supported, and more. (announcement, LWN coverage)

Linux 2.6.32 is released with devtmpfs, HWPOISON, more perf events features, kernel shared memory, and more. (announcement, KernelNewbies coverage)

Twisted 9.0.0 is released; Twisted is a Python-based event-driven networking engine. (announcement, LWN review)

If you didn't have an nvidia box you wouldn't care about this either. If I send you an LIRC remote will you bitch about LIRC not being upstream and Fedora/Ubuntu/everyone else shipping it?

-- Dave Airlie before he delivers Linus's pony

OpenInkpot releases version 0.2 of the free firmware for e-book readers. (announcement, LWN coverage)

Email client Thunderbird 3.0 is released (release notes)

Sugar on a Stick v2 "Blueberry" is released. (announcement)

Various efforts are made to get MySQL out from under the control of Oracle, either by license or ownership change. (LWN coverage)

So when I see another virtualization interface, I want the virtualization people to just argue it out amongst themselves. Thanks to the virtue of me personally not caring one whit about virtualization, I can stand back and just watch the fireworks.

-- Linus Torvalds

The Software Freedom Law Center sues Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and others for GPL violations on behalf of the BusyBox project (announcement)

Malware disguised as a screensaver is made available at GNOME-Look.org, which serves as a reminder to be careful where you get your bits. (LWN coverage)

Fedora 10 reaches end of life. (announcement)

digiKam 1.0 is released. (announcement, LWN review)

[Moonlight logo] Moonlight 2 is released. (announcement)

Mark Shuttleworth announces that he is stepping down as Canonical CEO effective March 2010, in favor of Jane Silber; Shuttleworth will focus on design and quality for Canonical. (announcement)

To be continued ...

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The 2009 Linux and free software timeline - Q4

October

November

December