“We… wanted to award companies and innovators that introduced
new technologies in 1998 that stood out for pushing the technical
envelope.” (Ed. note: Guess why we’re covering this?)
“Now we’re down to a few finalists. IBM’s DB2 Universal Database
version 5.0 was a top consideration.”
“Which brings us to another finalist: Linux. What dropped it
into second place with the rest of the pack was that we wanted
Coolest of the Cool to be about technical excellence, and what we
thought cool about Linux was mainly its sudden and amazing
political and market presence.”