I am writing this on the floor of CeBIT, the world's largest computer and telephony trade show. I am sitting in the booth of Medialinx, the parent company of Linux Magazine and various other "open source" magazines. I see from their posters that this year is the 20th anniversary of their flagship publication Linux Magazine, and I realize it is also the 20th anniversary of my involvement with the Linux project, because I met Linus Torvalds in May 1994.

I remember the first time I came to CeBIT. In those days, there was a waiting list to get floor space at the CeBIT show, and "first year" companies did not have a chance for even the smallest booth on the show floor. Linux International had a small booth in a "USA" pavilion, and except for the SUSE booth in another hall, we were the only visible "Linux" booth. The booth was shared by a fledgling Red Hat Software (represented by Bob Young), Caldera Software (represented by Ransom Love), and myself. We were handing out free CDs of Red Hat, Caldera, and (after they brought the CDs over) SUSE to anyone who asked for them.

During the first year I was at CeBIT, two other companies also carried the Linux flag, however. One was SAP, the largest software company in Germany, who liked GNU/Linux as a platform, and the other was an Israeli company called "Magic Software."

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