Security

Remote Exploit Discovered for OpenBSD 338

An anonymous reader writes "OpenBSD is known for its security policies, and for its boast of "only one remote exploit in over 10 years". Well, make that two, because Core Security has found a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in the OpenBSD kernel. Upgrade your firewalls as soon as possible."
BSD

Debugging the FreeBSD Kernel Transparently 55

An anonymous reader writes "To debug the FreeBSD kernel core dump efficiently, it is best to set up a remote debugging session between a development machine and the target machine, and remotely debug the kernel using serial communication. This article shows you how you can debug as many kernel images as you want; it becomes transparent to users once debugging starts, and your system's performance is not affected at all."
The Courts

Dispelling BSD License Misconceptions 202

AlanS2002 writes "Groklaw is hosting an article by Brendan Scott which looks at the misconceptions surrounding the BSD license. From the article: 'We observe that there exists a broad misconception that the BSD permits the licensing of BSD code and modifications of BSD code under closed source licenses. In this paper we put forward an argument to the effect that the terms of the BSD require BSD code and modifications to BSD code to be licensed under the terms of the BSD license. We look at some possible consequences and observe that this licensing requirement could have serious impacts on the unwary.'"
Operating Systems

FreeBSD 6.2 Released To Mirrors 168

AlanS2002 writes "FreeBSD 6.2 has been released to mirrors. The release notes for your specific platform are also available. FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development."
The Courts

Gentoo/FreeBSD On Hold Due To Licensing Issues 200

Alan Trick writes "Flameeyes (a Gentoo/FreeBSD developer) recently came up with some serious problems among the various *BSD projects who use BSD-4 licensed code (which is all of them). Even other projects like Open Darwin may be affected.

The saga started when he discovered the license problems with libkvm and start-stop-daemon. "libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause." start-stop-daemon links to libkvm, but it's licensed under the GPL which is incompatible with the advertising clause. The good new is that the University of California/Berkley has given people permission to drop the advertising clause. The bad news is that libkvm has code from many other sources and each of them needs to give their permission for the license to be changed.

At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors."
The Courts

Submission + - A shadow lies upon all BSD distributions

Alan Trick writes: "Flameeyes (a Gentoo/FreeBSD developer) recently came up with some serious problems among the various *BSD projects who use BSD-4 licensed code (which is all of them). Even other projects like Open Darwin may be affected.

The saga started when he discovered the license problems with libkvm and start-stop-daemon. "libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause." start-stop-daemon links to libkvm, but it's licensed under the GPL which is incompatible with the advertising clause. The good new is that the University of California/Berkley has given people permission to drop the advertising clause. The bad news is that libkvm has code from many other sources and each of them needs to give their permission for the license to be changed.

At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors."
Announcements

NetBSD 2.1 Released 109

jschauma writes "NetBSD for everyone! Lots of news regarding new NetBSD releases: On October 31st, 2005, NetBSD 2.0.3, a source-only security update of the NetBSD 2.0 release, was announced. Since many people are still somewhat confused by the new versioning scheme used in NetBSD, this release was preceeded by an explanation of the NetBSD branches. Only two days after the 2.0.3 announcement, on November 2nd, 2005, NetBSD 2.1 was released. NetBSD 2.1 is the first maintenance release of the netbsd-2 release branch, and was announced with binary distributions for 54 architectures. Primary means of distribution include bittorrent."
Windows

Windows Drives Company To OpenBSD 476

Barry Lyndon writes "Computerworld reports that the nightmare of windows is driving PriceWaterhouseCoopers, one of the world's largest accountancy and business consulting companies, to OpenBSD and open source in general." From the article: "'My predecessor spent too much [so] I was told not to spend any money.' When asked what argument he used to convince management to use an open source solution, Uemura said: 'They didn't have an argument because they said don't spend any money.' 'They trusted me,' he said. 'The whole office was relying on one domain controller which was dying.' Uemura said a lot of work was done 'behind the scenes'. 'My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it - don't ask! They will thank you later,' he said."
Programming

NetBSD Summer of Code Summary 20

UltimaGuy writes "The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce the results of its participation in Google's "Summer of Code". After Google announced this program to introduce students to the world of open source software development at the beginning of June, the NetBSD Project was happy to join the approximately 40 other open source groups as a mentoring organization and compiled a list of suggested projects. I personally think the Project tmpfs: Efficient memory file-system as the most successful one."
Music

Lyrics for OpenBSD 3.8 Song Out 20

PrayingWolf writes "The lyrics for the OpenBSD 3.8 song "Hackers of the Lost RAID" have been released.
As always, remember to read the lefthand column for what the song is related to - this time it's about (you guessed it) RAID drivers..."
Software

BSDForums Interviews Scott Long 121

Dan writes that BSDForums is featuring and interview with FreeBSD's Scott Long. Scott fills us in on some of the new things in FreeBSD 6.0 including Apple G4 PowerMac, AMD64, and wireless compatibility. In addition to specifics Scott also abstracts on the overall snapshot of BSD development with respect to OpenBSD, NetBSD and the ongoing debate between BSD vs. Linux.

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