Team Member Robert Watson Joins the FreeBSD Foundation Board of Directors and Executive Team

The FreeBSD Foundation announced today that FreeBSD Core Team member and respected developer Robert Watson has joined the board of directors of the FreeBSD Foundation, a non-profit corporation dedicated to the advancement of the open source FreeBSD operating system. Mr. Watson assumes the title of President of the Foundation. Jonathan Bresler, the FreeBSD Foundation’s former President, will replace John Polstra in the Vice President position. Mr. Polstra had last year expressed a desire to give up his Foundation responsibilities, citing lack of time.

Mr. Watson is well-known within the open source community. A long-time developer on the FreeBSD Project, Mr. Watson has specialized in security-related enhancements to the operating system. He founded the TrustedBSD Project, which seeks to provide trusted operating system extensions on the FreeBSD platform. In addition to his FreeBSD development activities, Mr. Watson is a prominent member of the FreeBSD Core Team, the FreeBSD Project’s 9-member elected policy-making body. By day, Mr. Watson is a research scientist and DARPA Principal Investigator at Network Associates Laboratories, where his research interests include operating system and network protocol security.

“We are tremendously pleased to have Robert joining the FreeBSD Foundation team,” said Justin Gibbs, the founder of the Foundation and its Secretary/Treasurer. “Robert’s experience with grant-based funding, his leadership skills, his wide recognition within the open source community, and his energy and enthusiasm will be very valuable assets.”

About the FreeBSD Foundation

The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the FreeBSD Project. The Foundation gratefully accepts donations from individuals and businesses, using them to fund projects which further the development of the FreeBSD operating system. In addition, the Foundation can represent the FreeBSD Project in executing contracts, license agreements, and other legal arrangements which require a recognized legal entity. The FreeBSD Foundation’s activities have included: Negotiating a license with Sun Microsystems to distribute a FreeBSD version of Sun’s Java Development Kit (JDK)(TM) and Java Runtime Environment (JRE)(TM). Acquiring computing resources and funding development work on Java for FreeBSD. Providing financial support for the June, 2002 FreeBSD Developer Summit Funding the development of enhancements to IPFW, FreeBSD’s packet filtering feature. For more information about the FreeBSD Foundation, visit their web site at http://www.FreeBSDFoundation.org/.