December 5, 2011

The FreeBSD Foundation has been proudly supporting the FreeBSD Project and community for 11 years now. Every year we sponsor BSD conferences and events around the globe, help developers with their travel expenses to attend these conferences, work to protect the intellectual property of the FreeBSD project, visit institutions and corporations to promote the use of FreeBSD, purchase equipment to grow the FreeBSD infrastructure, and fund research and development projects that enhance the FreeBSD OS.

We are deeply grateful for all the support we receive from so many individuals and organizations who value FreeBSD. We currently are at the half way point towards our goal of raising $400,000 this year. We are hoping that you, the FreeBSD community, will help us meet our goal by making a donation this month. By donating to the foundation, you are donating to the FreeBSD Project and community as a whole.

We have had the privilege of meeting many FreeBSD enthusiasts in person, through email, and on the phone. We are always impressed with the passion that these people have for FreeBSD. Most volunteer their precious time after work and some are more fortunate where they actually get paid by their companies to work with FreeBSD. When there is a BSD related conference we usually get quite a few travel grant applications requesting help with developers’ travel expenses. Thanks to your support, we have been able to sponsor the travel expenses of developers from Mexico, Lithuania, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Denmark, and many other countries.

Some of these developers recently wrote personal stories about how receiving help with their travel expenses to attend conferences helped them with their FreeBSD work. These stories will be published in our upcoming newsletter. One developer from Japan, whose attendance we’ve sponsored more than once, is a technical writer. The Japanese development community is comprised of earnest and skillful people. They are sharp programmers who know many programming languages, but learning and understanding English is difficult for many of them. He attends the conferences so he can keep up with the latest FreeBSD information and provide this information to the Japanese FreeBSD community in their native spoken language.

Another recent travel grant recipient runs a FreeBSD mirror server in Sweden, a country that apparently does not have many BSD users. He had a chance to meet many FreeBSD developers for the first time by attending EuroBSDCon. He has recently started submitting patches to our FreeBSD documentation set, and will hopefully become a committer, literally doubling the number of committers in Sweden!

Lastly, a Canadian developer that we’ve sponsored told us, “By attending these conferences I have gained valuable experience, connected with fascinating people that use FreeBSD, learned from presenters and most importantly, forged some friendships that will last a lifetime.”

These grant recipients have given far more back to the FreeBSD community than what they have received from the foundation. And, this is only one area where your donations provide a significant, tangible, measurable benefit for the entire FreeBSD community.

If you benefit from FreeBSD, please donate. With your donation, we can continue to support FreeBSD activities like:

  • development projects to support emerging technologies such as IPv6 support in FreeBSD, GEM, KMS, and DRI support for Intel drivers, Five New TCP Congestion Control Algorithms, and much more.
  • BSD conferences around the globe, including Europe, Japan, Canada, US, and Ukraine.
  • giving students and contributors the opportunity to attend conferences and developer summits.
  • maintaining the infrastructure of computers and equipment that support our community.
  • growing the FreeBSD community through marketing and outreach to users and businesses.
  • protecting the FreeBSD trademarks and providing the project with access to legal counsel.
  • helping FreeBSD continue to serve as the foundation for research and enterprise.

Please consider making a donation so we can continue, and increase, our support of the FreeBSD Project and community! Visit The FreeBSD Foundation website to find out how you can make a difference for FreeBSD today.