Dave H3 asks: " Does anyone know of any U.S. based firms that provide up to 24/7 telephone support for FreeBSD? I've been tasked with submitting a business proposal to list at least three potential, established, vendors. Other than Windriver I've not had much luck. I've checked several FreeBSD sites, including FreeBSD.org, to no avail."

LordGibson writes: "DaemonNews.org is taking up some of the slack following Wind River's massive layoffs of FreeBSD developers. 'Daemon News has been a BSD organization from day one. We are now happy to announce that we will be publishing our own FreeBSD CD sets, beginning with the next release, 4.5, scheduled for January 2002. We offer CD subscriptions, and our subscription plans can be for any desired combination of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Darwin. Since the FreeBSD Mall isn't offering subscriptions any more, you can get your BSD fix from us--at a better price, too.' You can read all about it here or jump for joy and go directly to the subscriptions page."

JigSaw writes: "OSNews features a very interesting interview regarding FreeBSD 5 with the guy responsible for the very good (technically) FreeBSD VM among other things. Matt Dillon talks about everything: FreeBSD 5, Linux, .NET and much more. Additionally, OSNews also includes two mini interviews with the NetBSD and OpenBSD head developers."

proclus writes: "The GNU-Darwin packages are compatible with Apple's newly released Darwin-1.4.1, and we now have Net Installation instructions for Darwin-only users. Our Bootable Installer CD is now in beta, thanks to the efforts of GNU-Darwin developer rrp. As you can see in the screenshot, our packages work fine with the XFree86 software which is now a part of Apple's Darwin distribution. We have recently packaged the latest versions of Mac OS X.1 compatible OpenSSH and XFree86. (Our older OpenSSH and XFree86 packages appear to be broken.) It is important for OS X.1 users to upgrade their OpenSSH. This is a great time to check out our other packaged offerings, which are also Darwin-1.4.1 and Mac OS X.1 compatible. OSX.1 users who are new to GNU-Darwin might like to try our new Net Installer. Just follow the OS X-specific directions at the top of the script. "

SidVicious and Intosi both wrote in with news that Wind River Systems (WRS), who had acquired BSDi's software assets earlier this year, including a team of FreeBSD developers, has laid off those developers. This has also been reported in other places, such as DaemonNews. This raises some interesting questions; for example, what happens to the "FreeBSD" trademark, which Wind River currently own. Read on for Wind River's answers to this and other questions.

Justin Lundy writes: "Last weekend Sean Lewis from Subterrain Security Group (SSG) presented a lecture on FreeBSD Security Fundamentals at Toorcon 2001 in San Diego, CA. It covers securelevels, suexec, chroot and jail, nosuid, rc.conf settings and special sysctl values. The presentation is available at http://www.subterrain.net/presentations/."

jmcneill writes: "NetBSD is now the first non-MS operating system to support PCMCIA audio adapters. A driver was added to the tree today to support the EigerLabs PCMCIA Audio Adapter. See the announcement for more details."

Søren Schmidt was browsing through the 2.4.10 linux kernel source when he saw something that looked a bit familiar. Too familiar in fact. Søren is the principle developer of FreeBSD's ATA drivers, including FreeBSD's support for ATA RAID cards, and as he looked through the linux/drivers/ide/ files the sense of deja vu was overwhelming. Read on for more.

LiquidPC writes "ONLamp.com has a detailed new article on setting up and using Windows Applications in WINE, one of the many FreeBSD ports you could have alot of fun with. It also suggests going to WineHQ to find out which programs will work in wine, and which ones will not, so you dont have to waste all your time testing."

LiquidPC writes: "ONLamp.com's Big Scary Daemon Section has a new article on how to rip MP3s using tools found in the FreeBSD ports tree."

ocipio writes: "The FreeBSD team announced that 4.4-RELEASE is available for download. There are a whole bunch of changes and notes. Please be sure to use a mirror." Those installing for the first time will no doubt find chapter two of the Handbook invaluable.

Asmodai writes "American Megatrends unveiled its StorTrends NAS software with NDMP support. This piece of software, which plugs into the StorTrends and ServTrends storage solutions, is a custom developed FreeBSD. Looks interesting for those who are interested in NAS and SAN and the subsequent managing and monitoring." It's interesting that this press release (because that's what it is) mentions FreeBSD by name.

KiwiSurfer writes "NetBSD 1.5.2 has been released. Check out the release announcement and the changelog from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2. Grab NetBSD 1.5.2 from ftp.netbsd.org or one of their mirrors."

LiquidPC writes "Running a cvsupd server isn't an easy task, but ONLamp.com has some help to make it simpler. In the article, Michael Lucas continues his series on CVSup."

Jacek Fedorynski writes: "Remember when Steve Jobs said that the MacOS X 10.1 upgrade would be available to anyone to download for free and also on a CD for $20? Well, it seems that they changed their minds about the free download."

LiquidPC writes: "According to an article by BSDtoday.com: Evans Data Corp., a market research company focused on the software development community, announced in their Embedded Systems Developer Survey that, by 2002, BSD will the 5th most popular embedded OS. This year, however, BSD did not even appear on the chart."

KingArtr writes: "qmail and djbdns have been dropped from the OpenBSD ports tree. According to the message from Theo de Raadt at the OpenBSD Ports Archive its because the license does not permit modification.". Update by nik: Note that NetBSD and FreeBSD continue to include qmail in their ports trees. DJB's license forbids redistribution of modified binaries, but does not forbid distribution of a 'framework' for modifying the source code.

Satai writes: "FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE has been delayed a full year, until November of 2002. The reasons included a lack of support for SMPng - including a developer fall-off ratio of 15 to 1 - a desire to finish the PowerPC/Sparc64/IA64 architectures, and a general desire to robustly test the additions. The economic downturn even makes an appearance in the announcement."

Justoc writes: "Wow, over the past few days there has been so much programming, porting, etc. in the Macintosh security world. Today MacintoshSecurity.com opened their site to the public allowing people to submit and discuss mac security news. Chevell of securemac wrote a nice piece on firewall security for OS X using freeware and shareware software. And Merilus ported over their Gateway Guardian and FireCard so it is supported by Mac OS X!"

LiquidPC writes: "ONLamp.com has an article on FreeBSD's CVSup servers, which includes hints and guidelines on using CVSup. Also, advice from John Polstra, designer of CVSup."