Linux and free software timeline Index

Each year, we do a timeline of the notable events from that year. Here are links to all of those timelines:

• 1998: LWN begins, Netscape open source, Perens/Debian split, Google surfaces, KDE 1.0, Halloween documents, ...
• 1999: Samba 2.0, Linux 2.2.0, Dell sells Linux boxes, GNOME 1.0, first LinuxWorld, Red Hat IPO, VA Linux record-setting IPO, ...
• 2000: RTLinux patented, VALinux buys Andover.net, XFree86 4.0, Caldera IPO and SCO acquisition, Perl 5.6, LWN is acquired, PHP 4.0, Perl 6 plans announced, Debian 2.2, SuSE 7.0, Red Hat 7, OpenOffice.org debuts, Python 2.0, ...
• 2001: Linux 2.4.0, SELinux released, Microsoft's "shared source", first Kernel Summit, Mandrake 8.0, Slackware 8.0, Dmitry Sklyarov arrested, Linux-based Zaurus, ...
• 2002: LWN.net is unacquired, Linus starts using BitKeeper, Gentoo 1.0, Apache 2.0, KDE 3.0, OpenOffic.org 1.0, Red Hat 7.3, UnitedLinux debuts, Mozilla 1.0, Debian 3.0 "woody", LWN to cease, LWN unceases, Caldera becomes SCO Group, ...
• 2003: "DVD Jon" is acquitted, SCO sues IBM, Slackware 9.0, Mozilla plans Phoenix Firebird Firefox, Groklaw launches, Linus and Andrew Morton move to OSDL, Red Hat sues SCO, IBM countersues SCO, RHEL 3, SUSE 9.0, Novell acquires SUSE, Fedora Core 1, Linux Gazette spat, Linux 2.6.0, XFre86 disbands, ...
• 2004: "DVD Jon" acquitted again, for real this time, SCO sues Novell, SCO sues AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler, GIMP 2.0, X.org releases X11R6.7, Mono 1.0, Slackware 10.0, PHP 5.0, bash 3.0, SLES 9, Ubuntu debuts, Busybox 1.0, Firefox 1.0, Thunderbird 1.0, ...
• 2005: Andrew Tridgell joins OSDL, RHEL 4, gpl-violations.org warns 13 companies, BitKeeper "free" license revoked, git announced, GCC 4.0, Google's Summer of Code announced, Debian 3.1 "sarge", Mozilla Corp., openSUSE launched, OpenOffice.org 2.0, Git 1.0, ...
• 2006: AppArmor GPLed, Red Hat acquires JBoss, first FreedomHEC, Google Earth for Linux, most SCO claims against IBM thrown out, GnuCash 2.0, SLES 10, AMD and ATI merge, open source Java, openSUSE announced, Baystar-Microsoft, Reiser arrested, Firefox 2.0, Novell/Microsoft, OpenMoko announced, OLPC hardware, ...
• 2007: Nokia N800, Linux Foundation formed, LiMo Foundation, Rotating Staircase Deadline Scheduler, RHEL 5, Beryl/Compiz merger, Debian 4.0 "etch", Microsoft patent claims, Fedora 7 (no Core), Btrfs, GPLv3, Mozilla MailCo, SCO bankruptcy, first Busybox GPL suit, qmail freed, Perl 5.10, ...
• 2008: SCO delisted, Sun buys MySQL, KDE 4, LWN.net 10th anniversary, Nokia buys Trolltech, Reiser convicted, Ubuntu 8.04, Debian OpenSSL bug, OLPC upheavals, Firefox 3, Kaminsky DNS bug, Debian 15th anniversary, Google Chrome, first Linux Plumbers Conference, OpenOffice.org 3.0, Python 3.0, FSF sues Cisco, ...
• 2009: Qt goes LGPL, Debian 5.0, Microsoft sues TomTom, Linux Foundation acquires Linux.com, ChromeOS, Launchpad source released, First LinuxCon, N900 released, Thunderbird 3.0, Shuttleworth steps down as Canonical CEO, ...
• 2010: MeeGo announced, SCO loses further, systemd announced, Linaro announced, Python 2.7, Oracle sues Google, LibreOffice announced, Novell acquired, ...

Also, of interest may be the 1998-2002 five-year timeline.

Ten-year anniversary retrospective series:

• Part 1 (pre-LWN 1997 - August 1999)
• Part 2 (August 1999 - April 2000)
• Part 3 (April 2000 - January 2002)
• Part 4 (February 2002 - October 2002)
• Part 5 (October 2002 - March 2004)
• Part 6 (April 2004 - April 2005)