I would like to discuss the following topics:

1. Bacula Release Status

2. Next Release

3. Vacation

1. Bacula Release Status
As probably know, the latest release of Bacula version 7.4.0 was released on 16 January 2016. This will be a quite stable release because it is based on version 7.2.0 (very stable) plus a few Enterprise bug fixes and features, which are well tested. As always the new code has been very well tested on Linux, but there could be a few minor problems on other OS versions such as Solaris.

2. Next Version

I expect that the next Bacula community version will be released in October or November, and as usual, it will have a number of backports from the Enterprise version as well as some new features that have been submitted (see bacula-devel list and bug reports) thanks to devoted community developers :-). There are also some new features that I have been working on and others I have planned.

This next Bacula version will be more significant than the 7.4.0 release, if only because one of the submissions that was held back in the 7.4.0 release requires a database upgrade. In addition, if all works out as I plan, there will be a number of other nice new features. Finally I hope to finally fix some of the outstanding bug reports that are annoying to users, but have been on hold since it takes a large amount of time to duplicate those particular problems.

3. Vacation
You may recall that last year I was away on vacation several months. Because Bacula Systems is doing very well with the means to hire new programmers, that permits me to do two things:

1. Take more vacation time — this time in Australia, Bali, Micronesia, and Japan.

2. Be able to consistently devote far more time to developing features important for the community version, which I have been doing since December of last year and will continue to do indefinitely.

When I have Internet and time, I will monitor the Bacula status and respond in case of a serious problem, while in my absence Eric Bollengier will be ensuring that the bacula.org site continues to function (it has been the target of several DoS attacks since the 7.4.0 release).

Thanks for using Bacula — be happy.

Kern