I have changed this ticket to an "Incident" and closed it.
Let us not presume that this is something wrong with Fossil until
we better understand the problem here.  It may be something as
simple as the host computers clock being set to the wrong year.
If, after further analysis, it turns out that this is a problem
with fossil, we can reopen the ticket.

Please consider posting about the issuing on the mailing list.

Will, many many people really have been using Fossil, on Ubuntu, for
a really long time.  Nobody has seen anything like this before.  It
must be something obscure.  Don't panic.