After the recent announcement that the FreeBSD boot scripts in /etc have been replaced with the next generation version imported from NetBSD, I've wanted to learn more about the new system, but wasn't able to find much info.

MorphZone posted a screenshot of the upcoming MorphOS 1.4, revealing an updated MUI look and feel. OSNews featured a review of the Pegasos platform just a few days ago. Update: In other Amiga-related news, Fleecy's 11th week of Q&As is online.

Project Mono, an effort to create an open source version of the Microsoft Corp. .Net Framework, expects to release version 1.0 of its software this year, probably in the fourth quarter.

"Win 2003 is the foundation for an entire wave of next-generation Microsoft products and feature upgrades that are coupled with the new platform. Without an upgrade, corporations can expect to be in a holding pattern. Win 2003 is the linchpin for forthcoming products and services, including an advanced file system, collaboration environments, identity management infrastructure, digital rights management and a platformwide self-healing management system." Read the article at ComputerWorld.au.

Forrester senior analyst Laura Koetzle pointed out that the IIS Web server program is turned off by default in the new version of Windows, so that machines not offering Web connections need not be secured against Web-based attacks. Read the article at eCommerceTimes.

"Rumors of a new .NET language have been circulating around the cyber-grapevine for the last year or so, but have picked up speed as of late. The fire was fed by Mary Jo Foley's (columnist, Microsoft Watch) recent news story Add F# To the Alphabet Soup. Strangely enough, there hasn't been a peep from Microsoft. The only published information I can find is hosted on the Microsoft Research (MR) site. So, I donned my thinking cap, and proceeded with reckless abandon. Here begins the tale…" Read the article at ExtremeTech.

A few more links to yesterday's barrage of SCO-related articles: "SCO CEO says no Linux is legit" (interview with the SCO CEO), "Meet Linux's New Public Enemy No. 1" (another SCO CEO interview), "Torvalds Sounds Off On SCO Lawsuit", "Analysis: SCO Takes on Linux", "Tragedy to farce--the SCO vs IBM lawsuit" (written by ESR).

The software giant's latest operating system saves data to tape using a slightly different format than earlier versions of Windows, a Microsoft representative said Thursday. While older tapes can be read by Windows Server 2003, the opposite isn't true for the new OS. A patch will be finished soon.

The GNOME Development Series Desktop 2.3.2 "Little Hero", is ready for bug testing. It is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors. Details here, changelog here.

Microsoft will rely on its time-tested bundling strategy, key to its successful capture of the desktop market, to help jumpstart its server software business. On the other side, at its JavaOne conference next month, Sun Microsystems will demonstrate a tool designed to simplify Java programming and steer users of Microsoft's .Net tools to Java.

It appears that proprietary SCO code may not be present in the Linux kernel after all. MozillaQuest magazine has done some research and determined that SCO's claims may not include violations in the official Linux kernel. Read more at MozillaQuest. Update by ELQ: Many SCO-related articles today:

According to the Free Software Foundation, free software includes "the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits... Access to the source code is a precondition for this." While I agree that the principles of the FSF are noble, I also feel that there is an unspoken assumption - an assumption that pods of hobby developers across the world can coordinate on the same scale that directed companies with a budget can. Where free software has an important place in computing, so does closed-source commercial software.

FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has uploaded the 5.1 i386 Beta2 release of FreeBSD. He will be uploading the alpha release, work is under way to get a beta2 for sparc64 and pc98. Additionally, FreeBSD team's Hiten Pandya has written a manual page for the Asynchronous Logging Queues (ALQ) for FreeBSD 5.x and is requesting your comments and reviews.

J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) and the .Net Compact Framework follow different design philosophies and target different developer communities. However, both have important places in the future world of pervasive computing.