Release 4.0 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. Highlights in the release announcement include "support for version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, Bluetooth, many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs.".

NetBSD is known for its portability and cross-platform availability, and this release confirms this reputation: "NetBSD 4.0 runs on 54 different system architectures featuring 17 machine architectures across 17 distinct CPU families".

Lots of mirrors are available to download NetBSD from.

QNX, the company developing the QNX Neutrino Realtime Operating System, announced the publication of the Neutrino source code and the opening of their development process. Neutrino is not under an OSI approved license, but QNX seems very honest about it and doesn't try to label eveything as open source. They call it the Hybrid Software Model, and they have a page dedicated to their licensing options. These options are 4 in total: Commercial developers, Partners (no cost), Non commercial developers and Open source.

Note however that the Open Source part is rather limited, as can be read from the page: "...QNX Neutrino® RTOS....contain contributions licensed under open source license agreements". And when you take a look at those contributions, lots of them seem to be Open Source tools used in the QNX development environment, like GNU tools. Some Board Support Packages have also been published under an Open Source license.

There's no doubt the development process is opened, eg with the opening of the community website Foundry27, but QNX is far from open source as confirmed by the QNX CEO in this interview. This is a step to openness in the embedded development world.