© 2026 Peter N. M. Hansteen The long wait is over. Fresh copies of The Book of PF, 4th Edition arrived here today. Which means: I'll bring some to upcoming conferences! When the email message with package tracking information turned up, I thought at first that this was yet another dirty, scammy, spammy phishing thing. Note: This piece is also available without trackers but classic formatting only here. It had been years since the last time I had had a UPS delivery, and since then I had only seen obvious scammy phishing things pretending to delivery messages that all in fact looked very much like the crummy fakes they turned out to be. But this one looked subtly different, in that it had both my address and my somewhat unusual name correctly spelled. In addition, the URLs were on close inspection all for actual UPS.com resources. And finally, the shipment had a total weight of 10.4 kg, which sounded about right for the stack of The Book of PF, 4th Edition author copies I was expecting to receive soon after the print run was ready to ship. Now, a few days later, I have just taken delivery of package, this time delivered to my door by a delivery man who was very excited to be delivering a box of books to their author. The box was slightly heavier than my regular backpack: and after taking the box inside, I was able to extract the 15 copies, as expected. This is me, holding my first physical copy of the fourth edition to come out of the box: This means that the process that started almost two and a half years ago is finally, tangibly complete. I have the shipment of author copies of The Book of PF, 4th Edition in hand. Regular readers of this column as well people on relevant mailing lists will be aware, as will my followers on various social media, that people who ordered the book early have already started receiving their copies of the refreshed The Book of PF. And some have posted their (so far only positive as far as I am aware) reactions to their media of choice. But for one reason or the other, my expected stack of author copies were not among the very early deliveries. Among the likely reasons are the fact that I am located in Bergen, Norway, which, at roughly 62 degrees North and in The Other West Coast fjords country, is somewhat off the beaten track for high speed deliveries. And as any good business would do, No Starch Press will put a priority on delivering the product to customers who put in preorders or were on the spot once the thing had been declared ready. Now I can tell you all yet again, the thing exists, and I am delighted to see the actual physical copies. I know some readers were expecting there to be an auction for the first signed copy like there was for the third edition. I have to disappoint you there. Unfortunately, side effects of decisions made by politicians on the other side of the Atlantic have made it impractical to set up an equivalent auction this time around. Instead, I would encourage readers who can afford to do so to direct a donation to the OpenBSD Foundation or to the OpenBSD Project directly, in order to support the OpenBSD project and the immensely valuable work they do for free software. If you're more of a FreeBSD person, the FreeBSD Foundation will be happy to hear from you as well. Once you have done the rounds of your favorite free operating system supporting foundation and have your (or your bosses') credit card back in its regular location, you can think forward to one or more of the upcoming regional BSD conferences. The main ones this year are, AsiaBSDCon, March timeframe, alternates between Tokyo (JP) and Taipei (TW). AsiaBSDCon 2026 will be March 19-22, 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan. This will include the first scheduled Network Management with the OpenBSD Packet Filter Toolset session of the year, on March 19th, 2026. BSDCan, Mid May to mid June, Ottawa (CA). BSDCan 2026 will be June 17-20 in Ottawa, Canada. This, too, will have a Network Management with the OpenBSD Packet Filter Toolset session, on June 18th. Details to follow closer to the date of the conference. EuroBSDcon, September timeframe, each year in a new European city. EuroBSDCon 2026 will be September 10-13 in Brussels, Belgium. The call for papers is open from March 1st, 2026 and runs until June 20th. All three conferences will welcome submissions during their Call for Papers period for talks, tutorials and other types of sessions as well as general participation by people regardless of geographic or other origin. And unless truly unexpected events take place, I will be at all three this year, bringing copies of The Book of PF, 4th edition. I look forward to seeing you at these events. If you are interested in coming to a regional BSD conference as a speaker, volunteer or other participant, see What is BSD? Come to a conference to find out! (also here) for some information. Through all of those events, our resident philosopher took it all with her usual calm: If you want to get the book, and using the link to buy from No Starch Press is not practical, I would encourage you to support your local bookstore and see if they can order it in. The Book of PF, 4th Edition: It's Here, It's Real is © 2026 Peter N. M. Hansteen (published 2026-03-06) You might also be interested in reading selected pieces via That Grumpy BSD Guy: A Short Reading List (also here).