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.
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.
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.)
The development branch of busybox is stable enough for wider testing, so you can now download, the first prerelease of 1.1.0. This prerelease includes a lot of new functionality: new applets, new features, and extensive rewrites of several existing applets. This prerelease should be noticeably more standards compliant than earlier versions of busybox, although we're still working out the bugs.
A new stable release (BusyBox 1.01) is now available for download, containing over a hundred small fixes that have cropped up since the 1.00 release.
Bug reports sometimes get lost when posted to the mailing list. The developers of BusyBox are busy people, and have only so much they can keep in their brains at a time. In my case, I'm lucky if I can remember my own name, much less a bug report posted last week... To prevent your bug report from getting lost, if you find a bug in BusyBox, please use the shiny new Bug and Patch Tracking System to post all the gory details.
The same applies to patches... Regardless of whether your patch is a bug fix or adds spiffy new features, please post your patch to the Bug and Patch Tracking System to make certain it is properly considered.
When you take a careful look at nearly every embedded Linux device or software distribution shipping today, you will find a copy of BusyBox. With countless routers, set top boxes, wireless access points, PDAs, and who knows what else, the future for Linux and BusyBox on embedded devices is looking very bright.
It is therefore with great satisfaction that I declare each and every device already shipping with BusyBox is now officially out of date. The highly anticipated release of BusyBox 1.00 has arrived!
Over three years in development, BusyBox 1.00 represents a tremendous improvement over the old 0.60.x stable series. Now featuring a Linux KernelConf based configuration system (as used by the Linux kernel), Linux 2.6 kernel support, many many new applets, and the development work and testing of thousands of people from around the world.
If you are already using BusyBox, you are strongly encouraged to upgrade to BusyBox 1.00. If you are considering developing an embedded Linux device or software distribution, you may wish to investigate if using BusyBox is right for your application. If you need help getting started using BusyBox, if you wish to donate to help cover expenses, or if you find a bug and need help reporting it, you are invited to visit the BusyBox FAQ.
As usual you can download busybox here.
Have Fun!