The 2010 Linux and free software timeline - Q4

Here is LWN's thirteenth annual timeline of significant events in the Linux and free software world for the year.

In what is becoming a fairly standard pattern, 2010 brought various patent lawsuits, company acquisitions, new initiatives, and new projects. It also brought new releases of the software that we use on a daily basis. There were licensing squabbles and development direction disagreements—all things that we have come to expect from the Linux and free software world over a year's time. Also as expected, though, were the improvements in the kernel, applications, distributions, and so on that make up that world. Linux and free software just keep chugging along, and we are very happy to be able to keep on reporting about it.

Like last year, we broke things up into quarters, and this is our report on the final quarter, October-December 2010, though there may be an addition or two for December. The previous quarters can be found as follows:

• January-March 2010
• April-June 2010
• July-September 2010

This is version 0.8 of the 2010 timeline. There are almost certainly some errors or omissions; if you find any, please send them to timeline@lwn.net.

LWN subscribers have paid for the development of this timeline, along with previous timelines and the weekly editions. If you like what you see here, or elsewhere on the site, please consider subscribing to LWN.

For those with a nostalgic bent, our timeline index page has links to the previous twelve timelines and some other retrospective articles going all the way back to 1998.

Smeegol, an openSUSE-based version of the MeeGo UI, is released. The project soon runs afoul of MeeGo trademark issues (announcement, LWN trademark issue coverage and Smeegol review).

The LLVM compiler project releases version 2.8, including major improvements to the Clang C++ support and two new projects: libc++ and LLDB (announcement).

The Software Freedom Conservancy appoints Bradley M. Kuhn as its full-time executive director (LWN blurb and interview).

Red Hat settles a patent case with the patent troll Acacia, but shares no details of the settlement terms (InternetNews blog posting).

The Utah Open Source Conference is held in Sandy, UT (LWN coverage: Learning from failure, Inexpensive audio/video recording, and Applying open source ideals).

Microsoft VP Scott Charney suggests barring computers without a "health certificate" from the internet as a way to fight botnets and other internet security threats. Of course, those certificates would have to be issued by Microsoft. (blog posting).

Ubuntu 10.10 ("Maverick Meerkat") is released (announcement).

Debian welcomes non-packaging contributors as project members in a landslide vote: 285-14 (vote results).

The Open Document Format Plugfest is held in Brussels, Belgium to discuss interoperability between ODF-supporting applications (LWN coverage).

The AsbestOS bootloader, which allows Playstation 3s to run Linux once again, is released (announcement).

The Free Software Foundation announces a hardware endorsement program to distinguish hardware that "respects your freedoms" (announcement, LWN coverage).

Linux 2.6.36 is released (announcement, KernelNewbies summary).

The first ever GStreamer conference is held in Cambridge, UK (LWN coverage).

The 2010 openSUSE conference is held in Nürnberg, Germany (LWN coverage: The state of openSUSE, The future of LibreOffice, and Making testing easier).

Mark Shuttleworth announces that Unity will be the default desktop for 11.04 ("Natty Narwhal") in preference to the GNOME 3 Shell (ars technica report).

The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) announced a merger with the Linux Foundation at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE), which was held in Cambridge, UK. (CELF/LF merge blurb and ELCE coverage: The state of embedded Linux and Device trees).

The Yocto project for easing embedded Linux development is announced at ELCE (project home page).

A plugin for Firefox that sniffs web application credentials from wireless networks, called Firesheep, is released (LWN article).

MeeGo 1.1 is released (announcement).

The 2010 Kernel summit is held in Cambridge, MA (extensive LWN coverage).

Fedora 14 is released (announcement).

Stormy Peters announces that she is leaving her position as GNOME foundation executive director to work at Mozilla on the open web (blog post)

The Linux Plumbers Conference is held in Cambridge, MA (LWN coverage: LibreOffice and code ownership and Life after X).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is released (press release).

The Apache Software Foundation issues a warning that it will stop participating in the Java Community Process if the TCK tests are not made available to it; access to the TCK has been promised for some time (Apache statement).

The first MeeGo conference is held in Dublin, Ireland (LWN coverage: Visions of MeeGo, Beyond mobile devices, MeeGo security high-level view, MeeGo security framework).

AMD joins the MeeGo project (press release).

Novell agrees to be acquired by Attachmate, while selling off 882 patents to a consortium owned by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and EMC (LWN blurb and article).

GNU's Savannah project hosting site suffers a SQL injection attack that reveals users' encrypted passwords (LWN blurb).

CentOS struggles with its efforts to release its rebranding of RHEL 6 (LWN coverage).

Novell puts out a message to assure those worried that Attachmate will retain the Unix copyrights even after the acquisition closes (brief message).

A generic anti-harassment policy for open source conferences is developed in the wake of numerous sexual (and other) harassment incidents (LWN article).

The Linux Foundation publishes its annual kernel development report (announcement).

The openSUSE "Tumbleweed" project to create a rolling release is announced (announcement, LWN coverage).

A Linux client for the Ryzom MMORPG is released (LWN article).

The GRUB bootloader accepts code to support booting from ZFS and releases the code under the GPLv3, without a copyright assignment (LWN article).

KOffice forks (or splits) and becomes the Calligra Suite (LWN article).

The Hudson continuous integration server runs into Oracle interference when trying to change its development infrastructure in yet another example of the software giant not quite understanding free software communities (LWN blurb).

Google announces the availability of Android 2.3 ("Gingerbread"), along with a software development kit and a new flagship phone: the Nexus S (2.3 announcement, Nexus S announcement, code release).

Matt Asay announces his resignation as Canonical's COO in order to join a mobile web application startup (blog post).

The Yocto project has a two-day summit in San Francisco involving 40 members of the embedded Linux community (LWN coverage).

An allegation is made that the US FBI paid to have a backdoor put into OpenBSD's IPSEC implementation, though it is still unclear whether there is any truth to it (LWN blurb, update from Theo de Raadt).

The Apache Software Foundation resigns from the Java Community Process executive board as it previously warned that it would over the availability of the TCK tests (LWN blurb).

Richard Purdie is named as a Linux Foundation fellow to work on the Yocto project and other related tools (announcement).

Several projects announce that they have become licensees of the Open Invention Network, which collects patents for the defense of free software projects (LWN blurbs: Gentoo, The Document Foundation (LibreOffice), and KDE).

FOSS.IN announces that 2010 will be the last year it is held; it has been the premier free and open source conference in India over the last decade or so (LWN posting).

X11R7.6 is released (announcement).

Openwall GNU/*/Linux 3.0 is released, which marks the ten year anniversary of the security-enhanced Linux distribution (announcement).