Graeme Turnbull writes: "As I was logging out of hotmail (shutup..) this evening, and as the Passport service automatically forwards me to ca.msn.com (knowing I originate from Ca), I noticed the headline 'Microsoft Uses Open-Source Code Despite Denying Use of Such Software.' The story is care of The Wall Street Journal. Due to the somewhat anti-MS tone of the article, I found it strange that this was linked from a MSN site!" Update: 06/18 by J : Several of our readers have pointed out an interesting allegation this morning at The Register: MSNBC doctors anti-MS WSJ story. Update: 06/18 by N : And several people @wsj.com have written to me to say that MSNBC picked up an early version of the story for syndication; this early version also appeared in the majority of the print runs for the WSJ. More details about half way down.

unFKNreal writes "A fellow by the name of Georgi Guninski has discovered a local root compromise in OpenBSD 2.8 & 2.9. He says its due to a race in the kernel, similar to the linux kernel race a few months back." The patch is out as of a few hours ago. Even a BSD newbie like me got his firewall patched and rebooted with no problem, after taking a moment to reread the patching instructions and kernel rebuild FAQ. The bad news: the hole was posted to bugtraq Thursday morning, with exploit code, so the black hats had a jump on you (sadly, note the date Guninski says OpenBSD was informed). If your system has any users you don't fully trust, check it over carefully after you patch! Update 3h later by J : Apparently NetBSD is affected too, and a fix is in-tree.

Joe Wanker writes: "Robert Watson, of FreeBSD-core and TrustedBSD fame, compiled and publicized a FreeBSD status report. The idea is to take advantage of FreeBSD's more centralized "committer" development model, in order to produce an ongoing report that shows the public what's happening with FreeBSD in a singular location. Take a look!"

Attila Nagy writes: "The unofficial (made by the FSN project) OpenBSD 2.9 CDs can be downloaded from ftp.fsn.hu/pub/CDROM-Images/openbsd. The set consists of two images, the first holds the necessary stuff for the installation (only for the i386 architecture, on which the CD is bootable), the second contains the binary packages. Please note that they are NOT the official OpenBSD CD-ROMs. The official bits can be ordered from the OpenBSD orders page. If you can afford the money, please buy the official set to help the OpenBSD project."

Joe Wanker writes "Darren Reed has posted some clarification on the IPFilter license hoopla. Specifically, counter-smacks Theo for the pile of bad press, states that threats don't do anyone any good, says he expects further releases to continue to contain the same licnese, and mentions that he is working with various core teams of important projects to make things work for everyone."

Well, the mirrors have had overnight to update, so I suppose we can announce that OpenBSD 2.9 is available. The release notes and changelog contain details of what has changed and improved. For our newer readers, OpenBSD is a BSD flavor that concentrates on security - they aim to be the most secure server operating system.

sparcv9 writes: "Anders Magnusson had gotten NetBSD/vax to run on a 3-CPU VAX 8350. It's expected that it will soon support some of the faster Multi-CPU VAXen, like the 8800 and the 6000-series. The full writeup can be found here on the NetBSD website." On a per-cubic-inch basis, this may seem a little strange, but it's a good way to fend off the reaper.

Patrick Mullen writes: "The Duke of URL has just posted its review of NetBSD 1.5. The review covers everything from installation, to its features, as well as how it ranks up in security and against the other *BSDs."

hubertf writes: "Last weekend, R-KOM and the University of Applied Science (Fachhochschule, FH) Regensburg, Germany, took their share of the Regensburg city marathon by putting a video and image of each runner reaching the goal on the Internet. A cluster of 45 machines from the Fachhochschule Regensburg, each running the NetBSD operating system computed over five thousand films. The cluster machines were operating on a common NFS storage, performing two steps. First, the video stream provided in MPEG format was split into single pictures, then a six seconds long movie was assembled for each runner reaching the goal, showing his personal run through the goal. Overall computing time was about 20h in which the five hours of video material was split into 670.000 images, that were then re-assembled into 5500 MPEG streams of about 1 megabyte each. A short english-language description of the Marathon Cluster is available, and there's also a german language version which has many details on the setup and operation of the cluster."

A nameless reader writes: "A few hours ago Theo DeRaadt removed the ipf source from the OpenBSD cvs tree in reaction to the licensing change by Darren Reed, the author of ipf. Theo's remarks on the licensing change are visible in the commit log here." Theo notes there that "software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia." That's keeping things all-purpose all right ;)

An Anonymous Coward writes: "I found this at SecurityPortal, here. I use IPF and I noticed last week in the snapshot the license changed: 'Yes, this means that derivitive or modified works are not permitted without the author's prior consent.' which was kind of bad since it violated OpenSource guidelines. Now the current snapshot of IPF says 'Redistribution is not permitted' which completely violates any Open Source style license. Does this mean IPF will have to fork an older version or someone needs to write a completely new version for all the BSD's/Solaris/etc?" The old license certainly doesn't read this way to me, but IPF author Darren Reed asserts this is only a clarification of the license, not an actual change. Another ssh vs. OpenSSH? More coverage at LWN, partway down the page.

tom writes "It seems that the BSD community will have to face, presently and in the future, some copyright problems. In fact, the IPFilter code is copyrighted by Darren Reed who recently added the following to his license : "...Yes, this means that derivative or modified works are not permitted without the author's prior consent. " This little add radically changes the status of the software which can not be considered >as open source anymore. Shall this modification influence the future of projects such as the OpenBSD, who actually uses a modified version of IPFilter? This originally came from Linux Weekly News." It's down towards the bottom of the page, now.

PowerMacDaddy writes: "Apple's Darwin project is gaining momentum. Aside from finally having a mascot and an approved OSI license, Darwin now has some serious programming resources behind it. According to this article over on ZDnet, Monkey Byte CEO Lane Roathe is now heading the development of networking communications tools for Darwin-compatible games. Apparently, Roathe is currently working on versions of NetSprockets and OpenPlay for Darwin. Is it time for Slashdot to add another topic just for Darwin news?"

Emmanuel Dreyfus writes: "Linux Compatibility on BSD for the PPC platform is a three-part series of articles published at O'Reilly's ONLamp.com. The series is intended to document various parts of the emulation subsystem, and to highlight some architecture-dependent issues that can arise in argument passing, signal handling, and with the way some system calls work. The first article is now available, with the others to follow soon." Though the article cautions that it is intended for the technically astute, it includes a very lucid description of what emulation requires, and how it actually works.

sparcv9 writes "Matt Fredette has begun merging his experimental NetBSD/sun2 port into the main NetBSD tree. This port supports the older Sun 2/120 and Sun 2/170 machines based on the Motorola 68010 processor. It's not yet available via FTP, but it's already in CVS."

evilviper writes: "BSDToday has a great article on how to run Linux binaries under OpenBSD. The article's already been picked up by sites like RootPromt and others so it's obviously as good of a tutorial as it gets. It's short and sweet, while covering everything from installing the OpenBSD linux package, as well as getting and installing the Linux libs for those of those without a Linux box to steal files from."

Teknoenie writes: "Upon a recent visit to the OpenBSD website http://www.openbsd.org i noticed a nifty change. 4 years without a remote exploit in default install. I have to dish out a big congrats to the OpenBSD team. Great job guys." It seems good to mention as well that now's a good time to order OpenBSD 2.9 if you're so inclined, since it's scheduled to ship in three weeks.

jim writes "This month's first issue includes articles on running BIND in a jail, scanning email for virii, an introduction to mutt, and keeping your FreeBSD docs tree up-to-date. Go take a look."

dj_flux writes: "OpenBSD is now taking preorders for v2.9. New features include a significant improvement in filesystem speed and enhancements in documentation. The release will be begin shipping on June 1."

David O'Brien writes " FreeBSD SMP on Alpha processors is now stable and has been checked into CVS repository on the development branch (5.0-CURRENT). John Baldwin, Andrew Gallatin, and Doug Rabson first booted single-user SMP on Friday, April 13th, and full multi-user support followed on Tuesday, April 17th. The code was stablized and then checked into the CVS repository on Friday, April 27th. Since being checking into the repository, it has been verified to work on quad-CPU DEC AlphaServer 4100s, dual-CPU Compaq DS-20s, dual-CPU API UP2000, and dual-CPU DEC AlphaServer 2100s. "