- Sep 29, 2006 -- New license email address.

  The email address gpl@busybox.net is now the recommended way to contact the Software Freedom Law Center to report BusyBox license violations.

- 31 July 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.1 (stable)

  Since nobody seems to have objected too loudly over the weekend, I might as well point you all at Busybox 1.2.1, a bugfix-only release with no new features.

  It has three shell fixes (two to lash: going "var=value" without saying "export" should now work, plus a missing null pointer check, and one to ash when redirecting output to a file that fills up.) Fix three embarassing thinkos in the new dmesg command. Two build tweaks (dependencies for the compressed usage messages and running make in the libbb subdirectory). One fix to tar so it can extract git-generated tarballs (rather than barfing on the pax extensions). And a partridge in a pear... Ahem.

  But wait, there's more! A passwd changing fix so an empty gecos field doesn't trigger a false objection that the new passwd contains the gecos field. Make all our setuid() and setgid() calls check the return value in case somebody's using per-process resource limits that prevent a user from having too many processes (and thus prevent a process from switching away from root, in which case the process will now _die_ rather than continue with root privileges). A fix to adduser to make sure that /etc/group gets updated. And a fix to modprobe to look for modules.conf in the right place on 2.6 kernels.

- 30 June 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.0

  The -devel branch has been stabilized and the result is Busybox 1.2.0. Lots of stuff changed, I need to work up a decent changelog over the weekend.

  I'm still experimenting with how long is best for the development cycle, and since we've got some largeish projects queued up I'm going to try a longer one. Expect 1.3.0 in December. (Expect 1.2.1 any time we fix enough bugs. :)

  Update: Here are the first few bug fixes that will go into 1.2.1.

- 17 May 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.3 (stable)

  BusyBox 1.1.3 is another bugfix release. It makes passwd use salt, fixes a memory freeing bug in ls, fixes "build all sources at once" mode, makes mount -a not abort on the first failure, fixes msh so ctrl-c doesn't kill background processes, makes patch work with patch hunks that don't have a timestamp, make less's text search a lot more robust (the old one could segfault), and fixes readlink -f when built against uClibc.

  Expect 1.2.0 sometime next month, which won't be a bugfix release.

- 10 April 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.2 (stable)

  You can now download BusyBox 1.1.2, a bug fix release consisting of 11 patches backported from the development branch: Some build fixes, several fixes for mount and nfsmount, a fix for insmod on big endian systems, a fix for find -xdev, and a fix for comm. Check the file "changelog" in the tarball for more info.

  The next new development release (1.2.0) is slated for June. A 1.1.3 will be released before then if more bug fixes crop up. (The new plan is to have a 1.x.0 new development release every 3 months, with 1.x.y stable bugfix only releases based on that as appropriate.)

- 27 March 2006 -- Software Freedom Law Center representing BusyBox and uClibc

  One issue Erik Andersen wanted to resolve when handing off BusyBox maintainership to Rob Landley was license enforcement. BusyBox and uClibc's existing license enforcement efforts (pro-bono representation by Erik's father's law firm, and the Hall of Shame), haven't scaled to match the popularity of the projects. So we put our heads together and did the obvious thing: ask Pamela Jones of Groklaw for suggestions. She referred us to the fine folks at softwarefreedom.org.

  As a result, we're pleased to announce that the Software Freedom Law Center has agreed to represent BusyBox and uClibc. We join a number of other free and open source software projects (such as X.org, Wine, and Plone in being represented by a fairly cool bunch of lawyers, which is not a phrase you get to use every day.

- 22 March 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.1

  The new maintainer is Rob Landley, and the new release is BusyBox 1.1.1. Expect a "what's new" document in a few days. (Also, Erik and I have have another announcement pending...)

  Update: Rather than put out an endless stream of 1.1.1.x releases, the various small fixes have been collected together into a patch, and new fixes will be appended to that as needed. Expect 1.1.2 around June.

- 11 January 2006 -- 1.1.0 is out

  The new stable release is BusyBox 1.1.0. It has a number of improvements, including several new applets. (It also has a few rough spots, but we're trying out a "release early, release often" strategy to see how that works. Expect 1.1.1 sometime in March.)

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