Mike Lockwood writes: "I haven't seen a formal announcement yet, but the Releases page on the NetBSD Web site says, "The latest patch release, NetBSD 1.4.2, was released on March 19, 2000." Now that I have already downloaded a copy of the mac68k port and installed it on my Quadra 700, I figured it is safe to tell the rest of the world."

Got a Cobalt Raq 2, but want to keep your BSD fetish going? If so, Soren Jorvang's announcement of a prelimenary port to this particular piece of blue iron should be right up your street.

AC writes in with a pointer to a story from LinuxMall: "In the wake of all the press surrounding the BSDI-Walnut Creek merger, there's one thing Kevin Rose, Marketing Director of Berkeley Software Design, Inc. wants everyone to remember: BSD was here first.

Nick Sayer writes, "Enlighten Software makes system administration software and currently offers a port for (various distributions of) Linux. We are considering native support for FreeBSD (given what our software does, running it under the Linux ABI emulator really isn't an option). We are soliciting comments from people who would purchase our software if it were available for FreeBSD. Please send mail to bsd@enlightendsm.com. "

jim writes, "Just a quick note to let everyone know that I just built Issue #2 of The FreeBSD 'zine. Another decent issue, lots of new stuff has been added to the site, and as usual, we have another batch of good articles. Be sure to check it out. "

Claes Leufven was one of the first to write in with the news that FreeBSD 4.0 is now available for download. Features added to 4.0 since it diverged from 3.x include: IPv6 and IPSec support built in (courtesy of the KAME project), OpenSSL and OpenSSH are integrated in to the base system, jail(2) ("chroot(2) on steroids") to help build secure environments, many, many NFS bug fixes and performance improvements, bug fixes and performance improvements to the VM subsystem, netware file and client connection support, gcc upgraded to 2.95.2 as the base compiler, better support for laptops, a much more complete threads library. . . see the Alpha or i386 release notes for more details. And before you all rush off to upgrade your production servers, read on for a brief message from Jordan Hubbard, FreeBSD's Release Engineer, and to find out where to download the release from.

Earlier we announced that Walnut Creek CDROM and BSDI are merging. Obviously, this will shake up the BSD playing field considerably, and will doubtless have knock on effects with the Linux and other open source communities too, to say nothing of the various commercial organisations that already rely on FreeBSD or BSDI on their servers. Here, to answer questions about the merger, is Bob Bruce, president of Walnut Creek. Jordan Hubbard, FreeBSD core team member and release co-ordinator, and Gary Johnson, CEO of the new company, also contribute.

It's been planned for some time, and on March 4 at a user group meeting in the Netherlands, Jordan Hubbard let slip the news that the ink was dry, and Walnut Creek CDROM, a big player in the development and promotion of FreeBSD, and BSDi are merging. Obviously, this has big implications for FreeBSD. You can read what's been written so far at this DaemonNews article. Later today we'll have an interview with Walnut Creek president, Bob Bruce. If you've got questions, then you know the drill. . . Oh, OK. If you don't know the drill, post them here, let the moderators moderate them up, and I'll make sure they get an airing later.

Elik writes, "Since I been seeing two different articles about how *BSD been used for the Internet Gateway products from IBM and Stallion E-Pipe, I figures I toss another item for you to review. I currently work at NetWolves We produce four different types of systems running on Intel Compabitible Platform using FreeBSD as the core Operating System. You can check out the press releases regarding the products. Plus, you also can test drive it as well after you obtain the username and password. I figures this will add another reviews for people who are interested in FreeBSD being used for business applications. " This is going to be the last one of these I run, as product announcements (particularly Internet gateway boxes) aren't really Slashdot's thang (get thee to Freshmeat) unless there's a quirk -- something like "BSD used in heart monitoring system" or similar.

Louis Bertrand noted that in another win for free software, OpenBSD can now be found in the guts of the Stallion ePipe, a dial-up network gateway, a little like the IBM InterJet we mentioned a few days ago. Playing to OpenBSD's strengths, the core processor is a Motorola ColdFire 5307 VL-RISC chip, and the encryption is provided by OpenBSD's built-in encryption code. They've even written a cooperative press release about it, complete with OpenBSD's very cool blowfish.

hubertf writes, "Two new channels have been created using Rich Site Summary files, an XML dialect, to provide NetBSD-related news to content providers and their users. The files are parsed by news services today to retrieve information, and re-distribute it in their reader forums and/or sent out via mail directly to your cell phone, if you decide so. Both general NetBSD news and news related to the NetBSD Packages Collection are now available not only from the NetBSD Web site, but also from the sites listed at http://www.netbsd.org/Changes/rss.html. Now all you Slashdot fans can get the latest NetBSD news without leaving /. for a second. 8-) "

gsutter writes, "The March 2000 issue of the Daemon News ezine has been published at daemonnews.org. Articles include a description of the Netgraph networking subsystem and an introduction to IPC. Check it out. "

DreamerFi writes, "NetBSD/i386 Firewall is a free firewall solution for people with a permanent Internet connection. This includes most users of cable or ADSL services, but also businesses with leased lines. The version that went up this weekend also supports folks who get their IP through DHCP, instead of just fixed IP addresses. The maintainers will now start to look at adding services like Web, mail, etc., just like the IBM Interjet that recently featured on Slashdot, so this is the time to get your feature requests in! "

Blue Lang writes: "Saw on the squid mailing list today that the results of the second polygraph Web-cache benchmarks are in, and squid on FreeBSD captured a few top marks, as well as performing exceptionally well overall. Interesting reading, especially as a comparison of free and open systems versus some very well-architected proprietary solutions."

Silmaril writes "OpenBSD started a CVS branch to add SMP to the kernel." Meanwhile, over on the NetBSD side of the fence, Bill Sommerfeld has committed his i386 MP spinup work. See both those links for more details.

stephen.schaubach writes, "The new IBM InterJet II is a small net appliance that looks cool, is small and has some kick-ass features, including: e-mail server, Apache, Firewall, FTP, DNS and DHCP services. Admin it from a Web browser like the cobalt's. But, best of all it runs an embedded operating system based on FreeBSD UNIX. The down side is that it looks as though you kinda of ASP-lease the thing. Anyone told VA yet? heh " The InterJet is a neat piece of kit, and the developers at Whistle have contributed a lot of high-quality code back to the BSD project, both before and after their buyout by IBM.

Hawks writes, "For you NetBSD junkies out there who don't like Darwin, according to the Changes to NetBSD/macpps 1.5 page, NetBSD now boots on the PowerMac G4's and iMacDV's. I would assume that means it should boot on the iBook and possibly the new Pismo PowerBooks. Hummm, 400Mhz laptop running *BSD...droolllll

Wes Peters writes (via DaemonNews): " I bought an ABIT BP6 dual Celeron (socket 370) motherboard today, to work SMP projects with FreeBSD. While poking through the user manual, I was pleasantly surprised to find the following in section 1-5.

Dual Processor Knowledge You Should Know

For best performance, you should use an OS (Operating System) that supports multi-processors. The following OSes can support multi-processor functions: Microsoft Windows(R) NT (3.5x, 4.x and 5.x), SCO Unix, FreeBSD 3.0 or later, Linux, etc.

(emphasis added) This is the first specific mention of BSD I've seen in a PC hardware manual. This board comes strongly recommended."

AC wrote in to say, "It seems that Informix are considering a port to FreeBSD. Cindy Munns at Informix has written to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc asking for people interested in a port to e-mail her with your name, your company, the number of users, and so on." I've seen this message, but it doesn't seem to have hit Deja yet. However, I've tracked down a variant from Cindy in comp.databases.informix. Informix for Linux already works under FreeBSD's Linux ABI, but it's great that they're considering a native version. And remember, there's no point mailing them if you're not genuinely interested...

the_ed writes, "After a seven month sabatical, FreeBSDZine has returned, with a new look and new articles. Check it out. "