Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 2005-06-22
The OpenPKG project releases version 2.4 of the
unique cross-platform software packaging facility.
http://www.openpkg.org/ — Munich, DE — 2005-06-22 — The
OpenPKG project is proud to announce version 2.4 of its software,
another evolutionary step after eight releases in four years.
Much valued by IT decision makers and beloved by Unix system
administrators, OpenPKG is the world leading instrument for deployment
and maintenance of Open Source Unix software when administration
crosses platform boundaries. The unique OpenPKG architecture leverages
proven technologies like Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) and OSSP
and GNU components to establish a unified software administration
environment, independent of the underlying Unix operating system.
NEW IN VERSION 2.4
This is the first release created by the newly established OpenPKG
Foundation e.V., which contributed a substantial amount of manpower
and all the technical resources making up the "buildfarm" and the
development environment for the release engineers.
Since the previous release four months ago, the OpenPKG package
repository has grown again by 15%. A subset of 562 packages were
carefully selected for inclusion into the OpenPKG 2.4 release,
including the latest versions of popular Open Source Unix software
like Apache, Bash, BIND, GCC, INN, Mozilla Firefox, MySQL, OpenSSH,
Perl, Postfix, PostgreSQL, Samba, Squid, teTeX and Vim.
Major technical efforts for this release were spent on migrating the
whole development and release engineering environment to the new
OpenPKG Foundation infrastructure, porting OpenPKG to IBM AIX 5.1 and
enhancing the Solaris 10 and Debian 3.1 support.
OpenPKG 2.4 is available for 16 different Unix platforms. Most
notably, it is supported on FreeBSD 5.4, NetBSD 2.0.2, Debian
GNU/Linux 3.1, Fedora Core 3, SUSE Linux 9.3, and Sun Solaris 9
and 10. Additionally, all CORE and the vast majority of BASE class
packages are already available for the tentative platforms FreeBSD
6.0, Gentoo Linux 1.6.12 and Mandriva Linux 10.2. It is also still
available for the obsolete platforms Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Sun
Solaris 8 and FreeBSD 4.11. Finally, OpenPKG is also known to work
under IBM AIX 5.1, HP HP-UX 11.11 and MacOS X 10.3.
The OpenPKG 2.4 release was a joint effort of many individuals,
most notably the Release Engineering team, this time consisting of
the OpenPKG Foundation members Thomas Lotterer, Ralf S. Engelschall,
Steve Weinreich and Matthias Kurz.
HIGHLIGHTS OF OPENPKG
* Portable across major Unix flavors.
* Supporting many commonly used platforms:
FreeBSD 5.4, NetBSD 2.0.2, Debian GNU/Linux 3.11,
Fedora Core 3, SUSE Linux 9.3, and Solaris 9 and 10.
* Additionally already available for the tentative platforms:
FreeBSD 6.0, Gentoo Linux 1.6.9 and Mandriva Linux 10.2.
* Additionally still available for the obsolete platforms:
FreeBSD 4.11, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and Sun Solaris 8.
* Additionally known to work for the forthcoming platforms:
HP HP-UX 11.11, MacOS X 10.3 and IBM AIX 5.1
* Entirely based on Open Source technology.
* Minimum operating system intrusion and dependency.
* Minimum overhead in software packaging.
* All packages up to date with vendor versions as of 2005-06-18.
* Sources of 562 CORE+BASE+PLUS packages released.
* Binaries of CORE+BASE class packages provided for supported platforms.
* Binaries of CORE class packages provided for all platforms.
* Easy installation, updating and deinstallation of packages.
* Bundled with useful and secure package preconfigurations.
* Includes an abstracted and powerful run-command facility.
* Virtual hosting through multiple instances on a single system.
* Proxy package mechanism for sharing packages across instances.
* Build-time package variations for maximum flexibility.
* Foundation to build encapsulated and self contained environments.
HISTORY OF THE OPENPKG PROJECT
The Open Source software project OpenPKG was founded in 2000 by
Ralf S. Engelschall and first released to the public in January 2002.
Today OpenPKG is a mature technology in production use. It is
maintained and improved by its original developers, organized in
the OpenPKG Foundation e.V., and volunteer contributors.
HISTORY OF THE OPENPKG FOUNDATION
The OpenPKG Foundation e.V. is a nonprofit organization with the
dedicated goal of supporting the OpenPKG project. The idea to organize
the social network of OpenPKG was born by Ralf S. Engelschall and
Thomas Lotterer in January 2005. A month later, on 2005-02-09, nine
founders kicked off the Foundation. Official registration under German
law was completed on 2005-03-18. The OpenPKG Foundation finally went
public on 2005-06-21.
MORE INFORMATION
The OpenPKG Project OpenPKG Foundation e.V.
http://www.openpkg.org/ http://www.openpkg.net/
press@openpkg.org press@openpkg.net
+49-172-8986801 (CET)
