FreeBSD Foundation Goes to EuroBSDcon 2014

We were thrilled to be a Gold Sponsor and to attend EuroBSDCon 2014 held in Sofia, Bulgaria September 27-28. We were also a sponsor of the developer summit. The conference was well attended, with over 225 people there.

Students working together on a project

Not only did we sponsor four FreeBSD contributors to attend the conference, but with help from Google providing women computer scientists scholarships, I saw more women attending this conference than I had ever seen before.

I attend these events to touch base with the FreeBSD user and developer community. It’s a chance for

me to find out what people are working on, what kind of help they could use from the Foundation, feedback on what we can be doing to support the FreeBSD Project and community, and what features/functions people want supported in FreeBSD. In addition, the other Foundation members, who are active developers, writers, and teachers in the FreeBSD world, attend, not only to connect with the community, but also go to sessions to get a more in-depth understanding of new features and functions, as well as learn what others are working on.

During the event, we held our fall fundraising campaign and raised over $2,000 in donations! One lucky donor won a copy of the newly released Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System (2nd Edition). Thank you to everyone who donated.

It really was a great opportunity to meet FreeBSD contributors from around the world. Attendees were mostly from Europe, including Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Russia, and Germany. There were also people from Japan, Canada, and the US. Every time I attend one of these BSD-related conferences, I’m blown away by the excitement and passion these people have and share. I’m full of admiration as I watch these dedicated people interact with each other, sharing information on their projects, helping each other with their work, and inspiring new people to get involved. I love watching the newbies interact with the more seasoned FreeBSD contributors (Rockstars!), as the latter instills a sense a pride, curiosity, and engagement in FreeBSD. It’s a chance for people to work face-to-face, get inspired, and learn about areas to get involved with. So much work gets accomplished at these conferences.

Kirk about to give a presentation

We had 7 Foundation board and staff members attend the conference. Kirk McKusick gave a two day tutorial on the FreeBSD Kernel Internals based on the newly released 2nd edition of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System. He also gave a talk on the implementation of ZFS in FreeBSD. Erwin Lansing chaired the DNS and Ports sessions of the developer summit, while Ed Maste gave a presentation on the current state of the LLDB debugger in FreeBSD. On the FreeBSD Journal front, George Neville-Neil was able to recruit more material.

The Foundation also held a board meeting which focused on advocacy in Europe and how to approach more European companies to help facilitate collaboration with the Project, as well as seeking more donations from that part of the world. We held many discussions with FreeBSD developers on current and future projects, increasing efforts for greater collaboration on graphics stack maintenance and a variety of technical topics.

Working the FreeBSD Foundation table

Overall, it was another successful conference and we are looking forward to participating in next year’s European conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

--contributed by Deb Goodkin, FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director