2006 Linux and free software timeline: February

[Posted December 19, 2006 by corbet]

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).

January

Timeline home

March ==>