This year was a year that wasn't exactly how we might have hoped, but overall, the state of GNU/Linux was overall better at this side of 2003 than it was at the other. In our annual tradition, what follows is a look at the ups - and downs - of GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source Software in 2003.
The year started hopeful - in our last year-end article, I said, “all indications seem to suggest that 2003 might just be even better [than 2002].” However, our hopes were temporarily dashed. By the end of January, one of the key players in the GNU/Linux desktop market - MandrakeSoft - had entered bankruptcy protection. Nearly a year later, Mandrake appears to be poised to reemerge in much better financial health, but at the time, many thought it might end up being liquidated.
It was about this time that rumors first started to circulate that the SCO Group had hired Boies, Schiller & Flexner. By March, SCO Group had taken away the air of mystery and announced their intent: to sue IBM and argue that the Linux kernel contained code illegally stolen from SCO's UNIX intellectual property. This suit quickly became a large scale “war” between SCO and the Free Software community as SCO broadened its range of attack and even started selling “licenses to use Linux.”
Things did improve, nonetheless, once SCO started letting out “violating code.” Thus far, Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, Linus Torvalds and others have been able to confirm non-SCO origins for all of the code in question. The case was further weakened when it was collectively recalled that SCO had released the base UNIX code under the BSD license as part of its “ancient UNIX” program before Ransom Love left the company (does this mean that this one time “foe” of the community might have actually ended up helping it?). Love also made headlines later this year when he joined the board of directors at Debian-centered Progeny Linux Systems.
But all was not bad - by a long shot. All of the major distributions took huge strides towards better usability this year. Red Hat's Fedora Core, release in October, along with Mandrake Linux 9.2 and SuSE Linux 8.2 were major advances over similar distributions even just a year ago concerning ease-of-use and functionality.
Desktop GNU/Linux also made strides in the OEM front this year. In July, Hewlett-Packard announced that a number of its Compaq d-series computers would come bundled with Mandrake Linux 9.1. Wal-Mart also continued to push its Microtel GNU/Linux systems that were one of our highlights of last year. However, the most interesting OEM deal might not have been HP or Microtel, but Shuttle. As I noted in our review of the Shuttle SB62G2 system last week, this is a system that is really appealing for both its functionality and practicality. As an ideal system for home or office and with a low sticker price, it may be one of the first systems that come bundled with GNU/Linux that actually sticks out as something beyond the bare essentials.
The Free Software desktop also got support from a somewhat confused Sun Microsystems. While it was not that long ago that Sun abandoned its plan to have its own GNU/Linux distribution, Sun switched courses yet again and released the Java Desktop System late this year. The system - which has relatively few Java related features - is based on SuSE Linux and uses a modified version of the GNOME 2.4 desktop. Sun also revealed some really exciting future technologies such as the “Looking Glass” 3D desktop, something that could be GNU/Linux's chance to move beyond following Mac OS and Windows and blaze its own revolutionary desktop trail (not that learning from the other OSes isn't a necessary and important part of the Linux desktop's rapid maturation).
Another venerable industry name that has suffered in recent years took to GNU/Linux in a major way this year: Novell. In a year when its neighbor, as well as closely related, SCO Group took to attacking GNU/Linux in increasingly large barrages of legal threats and actions, Novell started formulating a serious portfolio of GNU/Linux offerings by announcing purchases of Ximian Inc., a major GNOME developer, and SuSE Linux AG, the popular GNU/Linux distribution. Assuming that SCO attempts to block the Novell-SuSE deal fail, the deal promises to unite Ximian Desktop with a much needed foundation distribution in the form of the easy-to-use SuSE Linux. We're hoping Novell might get rid of the annoying YaST License in the process, making SuSE a truly Free distribution for the Free Software Ximian Desktop.
Real Networks and Apple also had nice gifts for the community this year. Real, whose aging Real Player for UNIX has fallen far behind its Windows and Mac OS X counterparts, announced the Helix Player project that would produce a new, Free Software client for a wide array of media files. While the actual Real codec will remain proprietary, the client will also support many Free Software formats, such as Ogg Vorbis.
Apple, on the other hand, offered a more “behind the scenes” gift in the way of its adoption of the KHTML browser engine for its Safari web browser. Following the announcement, Apple started to open discussions with the KDE Project with the goal of getting its enhancements reintegrated into the official KHTML base. The initial results of Apple's bug fixes should appear in KDE 3.2, scheduled to come out early next year.
Overall, these good events seem to far outweigh the bad. It can be truthfully said that GNU/Linux has reached the point of a very mature desktop, something that can be shown in the support that has started to appear, as noted above. If things continue to progress as they have so far, 2004 should be even better and more exciting than we can possibly imagine right now.
From all of us at Open for Business have a happy new year. We are excited about the possibilities for this year - to echo my sentiments from last year, 2004 looks like it could be even better than 2003.