The Foundation has published its semi-annual newsletter. It contains updates on this year's projects and fundraising campaign, testimonials from TaxiMagic and the Apache Software Foundation, and the Q1-Q3 balance sheet. You can read the newsletter here. It begins with the letter from the President which is as follows:
The Making of The FreeBSD Foundation
My first introduction to FreeBSD came in the form of a tall, wirery,
figure, camped out in the Walnut Creek CDROM machine room. Rod
Grimes cut the figure of a true hacker: skin only touched by the
rays of a glowing CRT, nicotine stains on his long fingers toned
by hours of vi keywork, and a wardrobe comprised of faded blue jeans
and worn out t-shirts. Regardless of what hours I worked during
my internship that summer of 1993, Rod was always awake, hunched
over his keyboard, putting all of his energy into the first ever
release of FreeBSD.
I was between my second and third years working on an undergraduate
degree at the University of California at Berkeley. Even attending
the institute of BSD's genesis, I was completely unaware of Berkeley's
contributions to UNIX. So it was really a stroke of luck, a random
choice to take a job organizing OS/2 software into a CDROM distribution,
that led me to Walnut Creek that summer to witness the making of
FreeBSD 1.0. But without Rod's passion and dedication, I doubt I'd
have realized the opportunity before me.
What I quickly learned from watching Rod and then delving into
FreeBSD, was the incompleteness of my education from Berkeley. Sure
I was technically proficient in computer algorithms and writing
code, but my courses failed to give me a sense of the art of computer
engineering: how to be a craftsman practicing my trade, how to
design and build a complex system that is robust and maintainable,
and how to collaborate successfully in such a system. The structure
and methodology behind FreeBSD made it the perfect vehicle for
absorbing the real world skills of being a successful programmer.
In 1993, the development model used by the BSDs was rarely encountered
in open source projects: revision control, a bug tracking database,
a coding style standard, the hardening of software through peer
review and discussion, and a governing body to mediate write access
to the code and to resolve disputes. Many of these pillars of
professional and successful engineering are lacking in both corporate
and open source environments today. In fact, it took almost a
decade for BSD's main competitor Linux to catch up and adopt something
as fundamental as revision control. In so many ways, FreeBSD's
development model was superior and ahead of the times.
So I started my second education while completing my first. During
my last two years at Berkeley I spent most of my free time, and
some time I should have devoted to the classes for my degree,
absorbing the lessons FreeBSD had to teach. The FreeBSD distribution
offered practical examples of how to deal with almost any type of
computer science challenge - examples that I found much more
compelling than the contrived exercises in my text books. While I
was learning I was also able to contribute in small ways. The
reviews of my work were much more useful than for the projects
associated with my formal studies. The feedback wasn't always
delivered in the most pleasant way, but that in itself provided
valuable experience on how to improve my people skills.
Small contributions lead to larger ones. The apprentice became a
mentor. Upon receiving my degree, I found myself sitting on FreeBSD's
governing body, the FreeBSD Core Team, with a skill set and experience
in high demand and not found in other members of my graduating
class.
The historical way to contribute back to the FreeBSD project has
always been to volunteer time to enhance the "product" that is
FreeBSD. For seven years this was the primary way I repaid FreeBSD
for the valuable education I received by being part of its community.
However, by 2000 I was struggling to find a better way to ensure
the continued success of FreeBSD. FreeBSD's mindshare growth was
slowing. Linux was starting to receive the attention and financial
backing of large corporations. I wanted to create something that
could promote, protect, and grow the use of FreeBSD even while the
duties of my paid day job prevented me from personally achieving
that mission. The natural answer was to form a corporation.
This had been done before. Jordan Hubbard was operating FreeBSD
Inc., but its charter and activities were never well defined. I
wanted to build an entity that engendered the trust of the FreeBSD
community, followed in the Open Source spirit of doing good for
good's sake, yet could perform tasks only possible with a legal
corporate entity. The FreeBSD Foundation, an open-book, 501(c)3
U.S. non-profit charity, was born.
Fast forward a little over a decade, and the FreeBSD Foundation
still adheres to the same mission I defined for it in 2000. Every
year we sponsor BSD conferences and events around the globe, work
to protect the intellectual property of the FreeBSD project, visit
institutions and corporations to promote the use of FreeBSD, and
fund research and development projects that enhance the FreeBSD OS.
But even with our $400,000 annual budget there are so many things
we want to do, but can't. Just as was the case for me in 2000, the
FreeBSD Foundation is searching today for new ways to help support
the FreeBSD project.
In the coming months you will see one of the ways the FreeBSD
Foundation is changing. Using the feedback we have gleaned from
countless meetings with FreeBSD consumers both large and small, the
FreeBSD Foundation is sponsoring the work to fully specify and
estimate the cost of implementing critical enhancements to the
FreeBSD platform. Developed in partnership with the FreeBSD
community, the goal of this effort is to provide a roadmap for
infrastructure improvements that have long been needed, but have
gone unsatisfied due to lack of a coherent direction. This model
will also give current and potential supporters of the FreeBSD
Foundation concrete insight into our future plans.
I can't imagine what my life would be like today without my FreeBSD
experience. Through the FreeBSD Foundation I hope to give back to
the FreeBSD community even more than I have received, and help to
ensure that the next young engineer has the same opportunities as
I did. However the FreeBSD Foundation can't do it alone. If FreeBSD
has impacted your life, please visit our
website and help us to continue FreeBSD's legacy.
Justin T. Gibbs
President and Founder
The FreeBSD Foundation
