December 10, 2024

In 2024, the FreeBSD Foundation significantly expanded its advocacy efforts, raising FreeBSD’s profile, fostering community collaboration, and celebrating its unique contributions to the tech world. Through impactful events, strategic communications, strengthened partnerships, and direct community engagement, the Foundation solidified FreeBSD’s reputation as a powerful, reliable, and innovative open source operating system.

Celebrating milestones and expanding awareness

In 2024, the FreeBSD Foundation celebrated 31 years of FreeBSD during FreeBSD Day, highlighting its legacy in open-source ecosystems. The event featured user stories, community highlights, and campaigns to promote its achievements.

Additionally, the Foundation raised awareness about FreeBSD’s governance model and its important role in the open-source world, reinforcing its relevance in today’s fast-changing technology landscape.

Key events and conferences

The FreeBSD Foundation played a critical role in global events, showcasing FreeBSD’s strengths and building connections with new and existing community members. The Foundation highlighted ongoing advocacy and sponsored development efforts by participating in conferences like SCaLE21x, BSDCan, State of OpenCon, OpenZFS Summit, and EuroBSDCon. We also sponsored and helped to organize the May 2024 FreeBSD Developer Summit and the Fall 2024 FreeBSD Summit. These events served as hubs for collaboration, with hands-on workshops, keynote presentations, and interactive sessions promoting FreeBSD’s capabilities across diverse use cases.

Showcasing sponsored development through advocacy

Sponsored development was a key focus for the Foundation in 2024, with significant progress in areas like WiFi, security, and containerization. The Foundation used blogs, presentations, and direct outreach to highlight advancements and their impact. Whether modernizing Intel WiFi support, creating a FreeBSD benchmark for security hardening, or advancing cloud-native workloads, these efforts showcased the Foundation’s role in driving FreeBSD’s evolution to meet modern demands.

Promoting FreeBSD through educational content

In 2024, the Foundation focused on education as a key part of its advocacy. It provided insights into FreeBSD’s advantages and applications through blogs, newsletters, and the FreeBSD Journal. Topics included release schedules, memory safety, and FreeBSD’s modern industry potential, targeting developers, enterprise users, and contributors to keep the platform accessible and relevant.

Amplifying FreeBSD’s story through case studies

The Foundation has expanded its collection of case studies to showcase how organizations use FreeBSD in real-world applications. These cases highlight FreeBSD’s reliability and adaptability, such as powering Netflix’s global content delivery network and building high-performance edge networks with RG Nets.

These examples, shared through newsletters, blogs, and presentations, build confidence among potential users and contributors and demonstrate FreeBSD’s versatility across various industries. By sharing these stories, the Foundation emphasizes FreeBSD’s role in solving real-world challenges and fostering innovation.

Fostering strategic partnerships

In 2024, the Foundation’s partnerships played a pivotal role in advancing FreeBSD’s ecosystem. From securing infrastructure funding through the Sovereign Tech Agency to enhancing laptop support in collaboration with Quantum Leap Research, these partnerships were essential for addressing FreeBSD’s evolving technical and user needs. Collaborative work on OCI Runtime extensions further positioned FreeBSD as a competitive player in cloud-native environments.

Empowering the FreeBSD community

The Foundation empowered the FreeBSD community through mentorship programs, outreach, and resources that fostered collaboration and growth. The 2024 Community Survey provided valuable insights into user demographics and needs, while grassroots advocacy campaigns encouraged users to share their FreeBSD success stories. The Foundation also celebrated its 20th year of participation in Google Summer of Code, mentoring emerging talent to contribute to FreeBSD’s development.

Looking ahead

In 2024, the FreeBSD Foundation’s advocacy efforts achieved a balance of technical promotion, community engagement, and strategic outreach. By celebrating milestones, empowering contributors, and showcasing real-world applications, the Foundation ensured that FreeBSD remains an enduring and innovative choice for developers and organizations alike.