2003 Linux Timeline: April

[Posted December 16, 2003 by corbet]

Defendant has taken a network created for higher learning and academic pursuits and converted it into an emporium of music piracy where copyright infringement is simplified down to the click of a computer mouse.

--RIAA

Super-DMCA laws, sponsored by the MPAA, are considered in several U.S. states.

Linux is booted on an unmodified Xbox by way of a vulnerability in "007: Agent Under Fire."

[Mozilla] The Mozilla Project posts a new roadmap which calls for significant changes, including a shift from the Mozilla browser to (the one called, at that time) Phoenix. (Roadmap).

The RIAA sues four college students for setting up indexes of music available for download.

Another vulnerability turns up in Samba; this one lurked in the code for eight years before being discovered and exploited (advisory).

Although a lot of people are aware of how nice it is and a practical thing to be working with free software, most of them have never thought about the issues of freedom, and that weakens us, because people who don't value their freedom are likely to toss it away.

--Richard Stallman

Red Hat Linux 9 launches (announcement).

The Phoenix browser is renamed "Firebird," a move which does not impress the developers of the Firebird relational database manager.

SCO announces SCO Linux Server 4.0 for Itanium (press release).

OpenBSD loses DARPA funding after the agency takes offense at Theo de Raadt's views.

[L]et me apologize for my choice of words in the phrase "immature operating system." Clearly Novell wouldn't be taking this bold step if we didn't feel Linux was a solid operating system with tremendous momentum in the marketplace.

--Novell CEO Jack Messman removes foot from mouth

Novell becomes a Linux Professional Institute sponsor and announces that Netware 7 will run on Linux.

The long-awaited AMD Opteron processor launches.

MandrakeSoft and SuSE release Opteron versions of their distributions (press releases: Mandrake, SuSE).

Linus changes the interrupt handler prototype and breaks every driver in the kernel - six months into the feature freeze.

In its IPO filings, one of the warnings to investors stated clearly that Red Hat may be violating IP and one day they may have to step up and pay royalties... There will be a day of reckoning for Red Hat and SuSE when this is done. But we're focused on the IBM situation.

--SCO CEO Darl McBride, but it wasn't a threat, honest.

A ruling in the Grokster case states that file sharing networks can be legal as long as its operators have no control over its contents.

Linus states that digital rights management and Linux are compatible (announcement).

The first 2.6 kernel "must fix" list is posted (list).

Conectiva Linux 9 is released. [OSAF]

OSAF's "chandler" personal information manager 0.1 is released (announcement).

The first denial of service attacks against SCO's web site happen; the company is happy to blame the free software community.

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