OpenVPN 1.0 Alpha Release

James Yonan released the first public version of OpenVPN, a lightweight, flexible, and highly configurable VPN daemon written in C, leveraging the SSL/TLS protocol.

Significance

This marked the birth of a new era for open-source VPNs, introducing a protocol that prioritized ease of use, strong encryption, and excellent firewall traversal, laying the groundwork for its future dominance.