2003 Linux Timeline: March

[Posted December 16, 2003 by corbet]

Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car.

--SCO's first complaint

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security coordinates responses to a sendmail vulnerability, ensuring that the U.S. military and governmental sites get updates first.

The SCO Group files suit against IBM claiming breach of contract, theft of trade secrets, and more.

The BitKeeper/CVS gateway goes live as a way of making the kernel revision history available to those who will not or cannot use BitKeeper (Announcement).

Red Hat offers two new Enterprise Linux versions with lower price tags (press release).

However, I think the role that software commoditization and its driving force, open source software, is given too little attention. A large component of America's economy is information technology, and free software undermines demand for such products, thus hampering recovery and increasing the attractiveness of outsourced development.

--John Carroll, ZDNet

SuSE Linux 8.2 is announced (press release).

The Oregon State Legislature considers legislation which would require state government to look at open source software in its purchasing process.

A community council for OpenOffice.org is proposed (proposal).

Two software patents allegedly covering SSL are defeated in court by RSA and Verisign.

Security holes in glibc, the kernel, Samba, and OpenSSL keep administrators busy applying patches.

Slackware Linux 9.0 is released (changelog).

Keith Packard is kicked out of the XFree86 core team as debates over the direction and management of the project intensify.

It would be nice if we could expect that our programmers would act more like airline pilots than fighter pilots: that they acknowledge, and accept, the responsibility that they take for the well-being of others. Until they take this step, I doubt that the quality and security of the code that we all rely on will improve.

--Jon Lasser

Red Hat pre-announces Red Hat Linux 9, surprising those who had expected an 8.1 release. [Mandrake]

Mandrake Linux 9.1 is released (announcement).

Schwaebisch Hall, a German town, switches to Linux for over 300 desktop systems.

Martin Michlmayr is elected Debian Project leader (election results).

Alioth, a sourceforge server dedicated to Debian, launches (announcement).

<== February

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April ==>

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