GNU Software in the Year 2000

Koos Schut maintains a list of GNU Software packages with information about Year 2000 properties collected from volunteer users. That list is offered as a guide and should not be construed as the record of a formal testing program or as providing any guarantee of compliance or noncompliance.

The Free Software Foundation does not provide warranties for its software. We can't afford to. So we can't promise that GNU software has no Year 2000 bugs, any more than we could promise you the same thing about another sort of bug. But we can tell you some reasons why such bugs are probably very few.

The main reason is theoretical. GNU systems, and Unix-like systems generally, represent a date/time as a 32-bit integer, counting seconds from the beginning of 1970. This 32-bit count will overflow in 2038; but there will be no problem in that year, because by then all systems will have redefined time_t to be a 64-bit integer.

We also have some practical evidence that such problems are not widespread. Some users running a Linux-based GNU system, specifically Debian GNU/Linux, used their machines for a while with the clocks set forward to the year 2000. They reported no special problems. Of course, that is not an exhaustive test, but it suggests that there are not enough Year 2000 bugs in GNU software to cause major or lasting difficulties.

If you would like to help us eliminate any Year 2000 bugs, we suggest that you set the clock on one of your machines ahead a few years for a few days. You could also set it to Dec 31, 1999, and see if anything unusual happens as the clock advances to the next century while you are working.

If you do find a problem, please send a bug report about it -- then the bug will most likely get fixed in a new release, well before the year 2000 rolls around.

Whether you encounter a problem or not, we would appreciate hearing which programs you tested in this way, and for how long a period of actual working time. Please inform <gnu@gnu.org> of the results you get.

You can check that you are using the latest release of any particular GNU program by checking one of our FTP mirror sites , or the list in our latest GNU's Bulletin.

If you're really worried about Y2K problems, you should note that our software is available as source code, which means you can check (or hire someone to check) whichever programs are most important to you. You can also be confident that other people in our community of over ten million users are checking the same programs.

With typical proprietary software, all you can do is take the owner's word. And even if you find out about a Y2K bug, practically speaking you cannot in fix it--even trivial changes like using 4 digits for a year are almost impossible when you don't have the source code. This is one of the several major factors that contribute to the magnitude of the Y2K problem.

Y2K is the most widespread time-bomb in software, but not the only one. With proprietary software, you have no way of finding any others.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@www.gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

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Updated: 30 Oct 1999 jonas