Looking back at 2003
We predicted:
- Governmental use of Linux would increase. Nobody can say that
we missed on that one. Legislation requiring (at a minimum) proper
consideration of free software in public purchasing has been
introduced, and often passed, in many countries. Nations like Brazil
and South Korea have committed to increasing their use of free
software. Cities like Munich and Key Largo have made big jumps into
free software. All this goes to show: it's easier to make correct
predictions if you stick to obvious developments.
- There would be high-profile desktop deployments. Opinions
remain mixed on whether Linux is ready for serious desktop use now,
but few dispute that it is getting there. Desktop Linux provides all
the functionality that many users need, and it gets better every day.
Big deployments have happened in many places, perhaps topped by Sun's
large Linux sale in China, which could eventually add up to
millions of desktop systems.
- We predicted a major patent challenge for Linux. A big legal
challenge did come in the form of the SCO suit, but patents were not
involved. The stage remains set for serious patent problems in the
future, perhaps coming from Microsoft's increasing interest in its
patent portfolio. But 2003 wasn't the year for that.
- We also predicted "a watershed year" in intellectual property
law driven by a number of high-profile cases. Certainly a lot has
happened; the Grokster and Skylink rulings went against oppressive
copyright enforcement, UCITA died a well-deserved death, and, perhaps
most significantly, an attempt to impose software patents on Europe
was defeated - for now. On the other hand, the U.S. Supreme Court
refused to limit copyright terms in the Eldred case. All told, it was
not a watershed year, however; one year later, the situation is almost
the same as it was before. All of the problems we had a year ago are
still there.
- The 2.6 kernel would be released. That happened, of course,
though it wasn't that far from slipping into 2004. We did say
it would happen late in the year.
- We predicted a "SourceForge crisis." Some projects have moved
away from SourceForge, and the site now has a donation box out to help
cover its running expenses. But certainly there has been no "crisis."
- UnitedLinux would not save all four participants; at least one of them would exit the distribution business by the end of the year. Well, that happened, but not quite as we had envisioned. But UnitedLinux member SCO is certainly out of the distribution business, and UnitedLinux has passed into irrelevance. We also said that MandrakeSoft would find a way to pull through and become a viable company. That appears to be happening, albeit via a period in bankruptcy proceedings.
We also missed a few things. The small resurgence in acquisitions of Linux companies (Scyld, Ximian, SUSE, Sistina) was a pleasant surprise, for the people involved if nobody else. The importance and commercial success of "enterprise Linux" distributions, along with the resulting backlash, was and is an important story for 2003. The increasing level of attacks on the community's infrastructure was an ominous development. And the SCO Group's rampage took us by surprise, along with just about everybody else.
What we didn't even bother to predict was that development would continue, the code would get better, and that Linux would continue to grow. That was too obvious even for LWN. But it happened, and will continue to happen. It is still true that the free software story is just beginning.
(Tune in during next week's break, when we will publish our predictions for
2004. We're still trying to get the crystal ball booted up properly as of
this writing; contrary to some rumors, the crystal ball has not been taken
down by a security compromise. Trust us).