December 19, 2025

As we look back on 2025, it is clear that this has been a year of meaningful progress for the FreeBSD Project and the FreeBSD Foundation. We advanced key development initiatives, strengthened core infrastructure, improved accessibility, and continued supporting enterprise-scale use. 

This work was made possible through the generosity of our donors and the dedication of contributors, partners, and staff. With 62% of our annual budget invested directly in software development, the Foundation remained focused on delivering sustainable, high-impact improvements across the ecosystem. The sections below highlight the technical achievements that shaped 2025.

 

 

Major Software Development Highlights:

In 2025, hardware enablement remained one of the most visible and high-impact areas of Foundation-funded work. Significant progress was made in wireless networking, graphics, audio, and power management, areas that directly improve the day-to-day experience for users running FreeBSD on modern laptops and workstations. 

Foundation-supported work this year included:

These improvements meaningfully reduce barriers to laptop use while strengthening hardware support across the broader FreeBSD ecosystem.

Infrastructure Modernization – commissioned by the Sovereign Tech Agency

In 2024 The Sovereign Tech Agency commissioned an ambitious body of work to strengthen and modernize the infrastructure that FreeBSD contributors depend on. 

The program of work totalling €686,400 was managed by the FreeBSD Foundation and has run from August 2024 to December 2025. The main goals of the program were to accelerate planned work to deliver zero trust builds, SBOM and security tooling, and improve developer experience.

As the project nears completion, some of the key work delivered includes:

  • Zero Trust Builds 
  • CI/CD Automation
  • Reduce Technical Debt
  • Security Controls
  • SBOM Improvements

To read more about this work visit

Alpha-Omega Security & Supply-Chain Work

This year’s Alpha-Omega work gave us a clearer understanding of the third-party software included in the FreeBSD base system and what it will take to support those components responsibly moving forward.

We completed the OpenSSL 3.5 LTS upgrade, eliminating a major end-of-support risk and ensuring FreeBSD stays aligned with an actively maintained cryptographic library relied on by many downstream organizations.

As part of the Beach Cleaning initiative, we are significantly strengthening FreeBSD’s third-party software supply chain by developing a clearer picture of the external components we rely on and what it will take to support them responsibly over the long term.

At the same time, we built a structured, machine-readable inventory of all third-party components in the base system—an essential step in the Beach Cleaning initiative that now informs our emerging Fix / Fork / Forego decisions around maintenance and security.

Additional efforts such as SBOM generation, test suite integration, and improved tracking of upstream changes and advisories are already underway and will continue into next year. Beyond the direct improvements to FreeBSD, this project is helping shape a practical model that other open-source communities can follow as they grapple with legacy code, uneven upstream support, and growing expectations for software supply chain transparency.

Google Summer of Code 2025

GSoC continues to serve as one of our most important pipelines for onboarding new contributors and strengthening community engagement. Under the Foundation’s management, FreeBSD completed its 21st consecutive Google Summer of Code cycle this year. All 12 student projects were successfully completed, with several participants contributing directly to the 2025 status reports. Some highlights include:

GSoC continues to play a meaningful role in attracting and developing the next generation of FreeBSD contributors. Since 2022, five new FreeBSD committers have come through GSoC, and one 2017 participant went on to serve on the 12th Core Team. Learn more about FreeBSD and the Google summer of Code 2025

Code Commits Sponsored in 2025

This year, the Foundation sponsored over 1,644+ commits across the src, ports, and documentation trees. These contributions reflect ongoing work that strengthens performance, security, hardware support, and developer productivity across the entire FreeBSD ecosystem.

OpenJDK Improvements

The Foundation continued sponsoring improvements to OpenJDK on FreeBSD, helping ensure that modern Java workloads are stable and well-supported across releases. 

 

FreeBSD 15: Modernization, Security, and Developer Experience

This year’s developer and vendor summits highlighted the significant advancements in FreeBSD 15. The Foundation also provided targeted funding and infrastructure support that helped advance several key initiatives contributing to FreeBSD 15. These investments focused on strengthening core systems, improving developer workflows, and supporting long-term sustainability across the Project.

  • Pkgbase Readiness
    Foundation-sponsored development and testing continued moving pkgbase toward reliable, production-ready use, improving upgrade tooling and system reproducibility.
  • Accessibility Improvements
    Foundation-funded documentation updates, including work on the Accessibility Handbook, helped make FreeBSD easier to adopt and more accessible to a broader audience.

FreeBSD 15 reflects the result of many years of community-driven effort, supported in part by the Foundation’s commitment to sustained engineering investment. For more details on the software development work in 2025 see the FreeBSD quarterly update….

Infrastructure, Compliance & Legal Readiness

Supporting modern open source requires strong governance and legal structures.
Key 2025 efforts included:

  • CRA Readiness through attestations and compliance support
  • Licensing Framework Refinements for ports and package workflows
  • Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring and Cost Management
  • Continued scaling of testing and reproducibility frameworks

These investments ensure FreeBSD remains stable, secure, and compliant in diverse enterprise and regulatory environments.

A Community Effort

This year reinforced to us that meaningful progress only happens when communities, contributors, and organizations share responsibility for sustaining the work that supports us all.

Thank you to all the developers, volunteers, testers, donors, and advocates who contributed to the Project. Your support is helping build a more modern, usable, and inclusive FreeBSD ecosystem.

Support This Work

Continued progress on laptop support, usability, and hardware enablement is made possible through community donations.

You can support ongoing improvements here:

Donate to FreeBSD Foundation | FreeBSD Foundation