2022 in Review: Advocacy

Yet another year is coming to an end and we’re taking a look back at how we advocated for FreeBSD over the past year. 2022 started with a bit of uncertainty,  but thankfully has ended with a bit of a return to “normal” whatever that means.  Through it all, the Foundation staff continued to work together to expand the ways to spread the word about FreeBSD. Take a look at what we’ve been doing for the past year.

We were excited to get back to in-person events starting with SCALE 19x in July. We also staffed a virtual booth at OpenSource 101 for the first time and we were excited to be back sponsoring and presenting at the Rocky Mountain Celebration for Women in Computing . Overall we were able to sponsor, present and organize 14 events in 2022 including the June 2022 FreeBSD Developer Summit and the November 2022 FreeBSD Vendor Summit. Videos from the Summits can be found on the Project’s YouTube channel. Trip reports can be found here. 

In order to help make it easier to find FreeBSD-related resources on our website, we debuted our new FreeBSD Resources page. You can now search by topic, difficulty level, and type of resource. The new layout is particularly helpful since we’ve also expanded our collection of How-To and Quick start guides to help folks get started using FreeBSD. The new and updated guides include 

One of our goals for 2022 was to better highlight the work that the Foundation and members of the community via the Foundation have been doing to support the Project. This is not about tooting our own horn, however. Instead, it’s about making sure the FreeBSD community is aware of what we’re funding and why. Blogs such as  The Foundation and the FreeBSD Desktop and Advocating for FreeBSD in 2022 and Beyond talk about what we’re doing to support the Project in specific areas and what our plans are for the future. While, blogs like RAID-Z Expansion Feature for ZFS In the Home Stretch give you an update on specific funded software development projects. 

Another goal was to showcase how certain areas within the Project work. Blogs such as Keeping FreeBSD Secure: Learn the Whys and Hows with the FreeBSD Sec Team were written to give folks a better understanding of what the Security team does and why. 

We also introduced you to the Project’s Google Summer of Code Students, provided conference trip reports, and introduced you to some of the new folks working on The Foundation Board.  It’s safe to say, we covered a lot of areas in 2022. Please take a minute to check out what you might have missed here. 

In 2022  we took a bit of a hiatus on the FreeBSD Fridays series. Earlier this year Warner Losh presented the second part of his   How to Track FreeBSD  Using Git talks and on December 16, our own Drew Gurkowski will be presenting FreeBSD Fridays: An Introduction to FreeBSD Services. We’re planning on bringing back more FreeBSD Fridays in 2023. As always, if you have an idea for a FreeBSD Fridays topic. Please let us know.

We’re also very proud to say that you can still access the FreeBSD Journal for Free. Being able to bring all of the informative articles to the community at no cost to the reader is just one of the ways we’re continuing to advocate for the Project. If you haven’t read it yet, please take a look and share with your friends and colleagues. 

Both the FreeBSD Newsletter and the Project’s Quarterly Status Reports are an excellent way to find out about upcoming grant and CFP submission deadlines, get ongoing updates from our software development team, and find out more about where we’re going and where we’ve been to promote FreeBSD around the world.  If you haven’t yet signed up to receive updates from us, please do so at the bottom of this page. A full list of what we’ve accomplished by quarter can be found here. 

As you can see, the Foundation advocacy team had a very productive 2022. We were able to accomplish so much this year, in part, because of the financial support from the FreeBSD community. Your commitment to the Project is truly inspiring. Thank you for your investment into the success of FreeBSD and if you’re able, please consider making a donation today. We can’t do this without you!