PRESS RELEASE MERGER OF QBALT/BLUEPANEL PROJECTS Melbourne, Australia, July 20 -- Project leaders for Qbalt and bluepanel have today announced a definitive agreement to merge both projects into a single open source project. The final project will be known as 'bluepanel', with the project website located at http://www.bluepanel.org Qbalt and bluepanel are independently developed open source projects; both similarly follow the server appliance concept made so famous by Cobalt with its RaQ and Qube appliances. Qbalt and bluepanel, however, both have been designed and built independently - neither is based on the open source Cobalt codebase. "This merger will bring together many years of development and experience, allowing us to produce and support a much better product, in far less time, and most importantly providing great benefit to the server appliance community." comments developer Ryan Verner, founder of Qbalt. "The particular areas focused on by each project are complimentary, so it only made sense to unify efforts." Software products from both projects have been used and tested in private production environments for some time. A public 'beta' release of bluepanel to the general public is now imminent, with progress furthering rapidly. Development on a commercial server appliance (codenamed 'ZERO'), a unique hardware/software solution based upon the now merged Qbalt/bluepanel open source code, is almost complete, filling a large void currently in the market. The power of a commercially supported industry-grade server appliance available for a very reasonable cost, and backed heavily by a vibrant open source community will mean possibilities only previously dreamt about; imagine, a product that can never be made end-of-life given continued community support for the product. flame, founder of the original bluepanel, adds: "The bluepanel project is committed to providing ongoing support for its software on Sun/Cobalt RaQ3, RaQ4 & RaQ550 hardware along with support for new bluepanel appliance hardware. This is an open source project and our development will be directed by what the community wants." If you're interested in being part of the project, as a developer or as a member of the bluepanel community, the project would love your involvement. Further news and information to come in the near future, including how to get involved as either a developer, supporter, or a beta tester. CONTACT INFORMATION: flame Ryan Verner "bluepanel" "Qbalt"