Following Hetz's corrections, an improved "version" of the forecasts is
following (BTW: sorry for mentioning RH8 instead of 7.3; actually, I
knew that 8.0 was delayed and that they decided to call the soon
version "7.3", but it "escaped" of my memory... As to other notes of
him, some of them just seconded what I wrote, for example - "Monday or
Tuesday" guess regarding KDE3, was not different than my original guess
- "beginning of April". Thanks Hetz!):
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
April 2002 is going to be a hot month for Linux. Once per a year or two
there is a time crowded with announcements, and I try to guess them and
their exact time. I'll repeat it here. Contrary to research companies
(such as Gartner, IDC) I will not use general forecasts ("new versions
of Linux desktop managers will be announced during 2002") or disclaim
myself ("probability of 0.6"), but be very specific. Nevertheless, I
had always high successes (~80%), and I hope to repeat them this time.
Contrary to proprietary software, OSS is composed of many projects that
are developed in parallel, and each has its own major releases, usually
once per 2 or even 3 years. If you take the 10-15 key OSS projects, and
their major announcements are spreaded over the time, then you have 1
or 2 announcments per a quarter.
Sometimes, in coincidence, many projects reach important milestones
together. It is going to happen now, on April (and maybe May too) which
is going to be exciting, with almost a major announcement per a week.
Some of the following announcments are known to some people here, some
not. For the convenience of everybody, I'll list all of them here:
KDE 3.0:
========
Beginning of April, +- 1 week.
GNOME 2.0:
==========
Expected to May 1, according to the schedule.
A big loss for GNOME, which is going to miss the inclusion of its new
version in RH7.3 (Red Hat has been always the most loyal supporter of
GNOME).
My guess: somewhere in May.
Apache 2.0:
===========
After 4 years of development, ASF will release it on the beginning of
May, +- 2 weeks (my guess; ASF doesn't know it, yet...).
The main cause of delay, in my eyes, is 3rd-party add-ons slowing to
port their stuff to 2.0 (webmin, FastCGI, Apacompile, etc.); the
stability is very high, and 2.0 is mature and ready for the big time.
Mozilla 1.0:
============
Mid of April, +- 2 weeks.
SuSE 8.0:
=========
Expected by the vendor to April 22 (they will meet it, of course; after
all, they are German...).
Will be based of KDE3 and XFree86 4.2.
SuSE was blamed in the past for delaying their FTP availability, to
encourage purchasers of the CD's, so don't expect any FTP availability
on April 22.
Red Hat 7.3:
============
End of April, +- 2 weeks.
Not really a major release, but considering the huge impact that it is
going to have on the Linux market (according to my forecast, it is
going to be very popular, like 6.2 was), it deserves inclusion in this
paper.
Will contain KDE3 and XFree86 4.2, but still GCC-2.9.6 and GNOME 1.4.
(first time that KDE is supplied in a better status than GNOME under
RH; of course, users can always download GNOME2 when it is ready, but
the experience teaches us that more than 90% of the users don't upgrade
anything, maybe except for security patches).
WINE 1.0:
=========
Contrary to the expectations, I do NOT see any WINE 1.0 soon.
Although this is a list of expected announcements, and not of the "non"
announcments, I mention it here, because there are too many rumors
about a soon 1.0.
WW 3.0:
=======
No World War is expected soon, although there is a possibility to see a
large-scale war in the second half of the year. Meanwhile, I DO expect
a local war in this region in the following months, though I'm not sure
who against who: U.S and UK against Iraq? Iraq and Hizballah against
Israel? Israel against Palestinians? Palestinians against the U.S?
Not a too positive news, but we will have to pass it, and hope to have
a better world after it ends. Off-topic? not at all; It will have a
big impact on our life here and our work, including development for
Linux and using it.
Note: I didn't write any politics here, but only a laconic forecast,
without interpretations. Please don't change the issue into politics...
Wow, what a list... and all of this, in a so short time...
There are many other expected announcements, but not as imporant as the
listed above (although it depends on your personal taste, which may
differ than mine...). Some of the other announcements are not major
upgrades (but only minor), and some are of not so important packages.
Happy (and Kosher - for those of us who are not offended by this wish)
Passover!
--
Eli Marmor
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CTO, Founder
Netmask (El-Mar) Internet Technologies Ltd.
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