FreeBSD Foundation

FreeBSD Foundation Intern Sourojeet Adhikari on Bringing ROCm to FreeBSD

Florine Kamdem — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:34:20 +0000

For University of Waterloo student Sourojeet Adhikari, an early interest in understanding how computers work eventually grew into a summer spent helping bring AMD’s ROCm GPU computing platform to FreeBSD.

Sourojeet is studying Mathematical Physics and entering the third year of his degree. This summer, he joined the FreeBSD Foundation as an intern, working on a project that combines several of his interests: systems programming, GPU computing, and open source.

We spoke with Sourojeet about his path into open source, the challenges of bringing ROCm to FreeBSD, what he learned from debugging difficult problems, and why students shouldn’t be intimidated by contributing to a large open source project.

An Early Introduction to Open Source

Sourojeet’s interest in open source began when he built his first computer. Without a Windows installation disc or drive available, he turned to what he could find: an Ubuntu 12.04 installation CD sitting on a shelf in his basement.

“I installed Ubuntu and spent days figuring out how to use it,” he said. “From then on, I more or less ran Linux on almost every computer or server I’ve ever owned.”

FreeBSD was also part of his early exposure to open source. One of his parents ran a FreeBSD firewall and another FreeBSD server for a time. The firewall is still running today.

What kept Sourojeet interested was the freedom to explore.

“Open source software generally let me play around with and look deep into the internals of software, modify it, and try to break it,” he said. “That’s why I loved it so much.”

His interest in systems programming came from another question: How can I make my programs faster?

Understanding performance meant understanding what a system was doing under the hood. That curiosity led him deeper into systems programming and, eventually, GPU programming.

Bringing ROCm to FreeBSD

Sourojeet found the FreeBSD Foundation internship through WaterlooWorks, the University of Waterloo’s co-op job board.

His internship project focused on bringing AMD’s ROCm platform to FreeBSD.

Modern computers rely on different components designed for different kinds of work. CPUs are general-purpose processors built to handle a broad range of tasks, while GPUs are highly effective at performing certain kinds of mathematical operations in parallel.

That makes GPUs useful for much more than graphics. Workloads including machine learning, fluid simulations, and data processing can benefit significantly from GPU acceleration.

Platforms such as NVIDIA’s CUDA and AMD’s ROCm give developers the tools needed to take advantage of that computing power. However, these ecosystems have primarily focused on Windows and Linux, with limited native support on FreeBSD.

Sourojeet’s goal was to help change that.

His work involved patching AMD’s LLVM fork, making changes to ROCm’s GPU runtimes, and working to integrate the driver into drm-kmod. Some of the LLVM changes have already been upstreamed, while other pieces of the work are still being merged and developed.

“Slowly but surely, we’ll soon be able to natively run ROCm code on FreeBSD,” he said.

Finding the Bugs That Don’t Want to Be Found

For Sourojeet, one of the most rewarding parts of the internship was also one of the most difficult: debugging.

One issue took several hours to track down and came from a subtle difference between mutable and constant data.

The problem involved LinuxKPI, a compatibility layer in the FreeBSD kernel that helps translate or provide Linux kernel interfaces needed by certain drivers. A Linux function called class_register had changed in newer Linux versions to accept a const structure. The AMD kernel code Sourojeet was porting expected that newer behavior, while the corresponding FreeBSD LinuxKPI implementation still expected a mutable structure.

The mismatch caused a kernel panic.

“It took me maybe three or four hours to figure that one out,” Sourojeet said.

Rather than being discouraged by those problems, he found them to be some of the most enjoyable parts of the work.

“The most fun part was generally debugging the hard-to-find bugs and issues in the code.”

Working Through the Tedious Parts

Not every challenge involved a single difficult bug. Much of the porting work required dealing with Linux-specific macros and functions that did not yet exist on FreeBSD.

Sourojeet first had to determine whether a missing function or code path was actually necessary. Some functionality, such as code related to suspend or sleep behavior, was not required for the initial work and could be temporarily disabled. In other cases, a missing function was too important to remove and needed a temporary stub so development could continue.

The individual changes were not always technically complex. The challenge was often the amount of careful, repetitive work required to move the project forward.

“The actual changes you needed to make to get the driver running weren’t hard or insane,” he said. “Rather, they were just mentally grueling and very tedious.”

That experience also reinforced something Sourojeet wants other potential contributors to understand: meaningful open source work does not always require being an expert.

“If you’re reading this and have some ability to read and write C code, you could probably help out with almost everything.”

Connecting With the Community at BSDCan

During the summer, Sourojeet also attended BSDCan, giving him an opportunity to connect with members of the BSD community in person.

One talk that stood out was Minsoo Choo’s presentation on heterogeneous scheduling on FreeBSD. Sourojeet was particularly interested in the discussion around scheduling costs and performance across different CPU cores.

But some of his favorite parts of BSDCan happened outside the formal sessions.

“The hallway track was a lot more interesting from what I remember,” he said.

Those conversations covered topics ranging from software testing and GPU initialization to heterogeneous memory management on FreeBSD. The latter is especially relevant to where Sourojeet’s own work may go next.

Open Source Is More Approachable Than It Looks

After spending the summer working directly within the FreeBSD ecosystem, Sourojeet came away with an even stronger belief that contributing to open source is more accessible than many new developers assume.

“This internship reinforced my belief that open source is not particularly scary or hard to contribute to,” he said. “It just needs some time and energy.”

His advice to students and first-time contributors is simple: don’t wait until you think you know everything.

“Don’t wait until you think you’re perfect, or the best at coding,” he said. “A lot of the work is tedious debugging, writing docs, or even implementing basic functions.”

Large codebases can look intimidating from the outside, but Sourojeet encourages new contributors to focus on the problem in front of them rather than the size of the entire project.

“It’s just code—maybe a lot of code—but I have faith that anyone who puts in some time and energy can come out with some meaningful changes.”

What’s Next?

Sourojeet expects his work with ROCm and FreeBSD to continue beyond the internship.

The project is already approaching an important milestone: running a simple vector addition workload. The driver can link, load, and run, although there are still issues to resolve in userspace.

From there, Sourojeet expects to spend more time exploring FreeBSD’s memory management systems, particularly the work required to support Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM).

As for his longer-term career plans, he is keeping his options open.

His ideal path may involve computational fluid dynamics—or, as he jokes, making enough money to eventually retire and hire interns to tackle difficult problems like HMM on FreeBSD. But his experience this summer has also opened another possibility: working on GPU toolchains.

Whatever direction he takes, the internship has given him practical experience solving problems deep within a complex open source system, and a reason to keep contributing.

Sourojeet also credits the people who supported him throughout the project, including Ed Maste, Olivier Certner, Mark Johnson, Jean-Sébastien Pédron, Bjoern Zeeb, Adrian Chadd, Minsoo Choo, and Devin Teske.

His summer is also a reminder for students considering their first open source contribution: you don’t need to understand an entire operating system before you can make an impact. Start with a problem, spend the time to understand it, and contribute what you can.

The FreeBSD Foundation would also like to thank Sourojeet for his contributions throughout the semester. We appreciate the curiosity, persistence, and technical effort he brought to the internship, as well as his willingness to tackle challenging problems and continue pushing ROCm support on FreeBSD forward.

The post FreeBSD Foundation Intern Sourojeet Adhikari on Bringing ROCm to FreeBSD first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

FreeBSD Foundation Intern Jim Huang Chen on Raspberry Pi Support and Open Source

Florine Kamdem — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:29:17 +0000

When Jim Huang Chen began his internship with the FreeBSD Foundation, he was only finishing his first year as a Software Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. A few months later, he had spent the summer working inside the FreeBSD codebase, contributing to Raspberry Pi support, learning from longtime developers, and gaining a much deeper understanding of how an operating system works.

For Jim, that process of learning became one of the most valuable parts of the experience.

From a Graphing Calculator to Systems Programming

Jim’s interest in programming started well before university.

Around seventh grade, he began programming simple games on a TI-84 graphing calculator using TI-BASIC. That eventually led him to the Cemetech community, where he connected with other technology enthusiasts and started exploring lower-level languages, including assembly and C.

Throughout high school, Jim frequently worked with older hardware that he didn’t want to purchase Windows licenses for. Linux became the natural alternative, introducing him more deeply to open source software and the communities surrounding it.

“Systems programming is about as close as you can get to treating computers as a machine rather than magical software abstractions,” Jim said.

That perspective appealed to his interests in mathematics, computation, and understanding what computers are actually doing beneath the software we interact with every day.

Taking a Chance on FreeBSD

Jim originally expected to pursue Google Summer of Code and didn’t know that the FreeBSD Foundation offered an internship program.

That changed when he came across the opportunity on WaterlooWorks, the University of Waterloo’s job board.

With hundreds of other applicants, he wasn’t particularly confident about his chances. But the work interested him enough to apply anyway.

“I figured I might as well write a cover letter, submit my resume, and pray,” he said. “I’m glad it worked out!”

That application led to a summer focused primarily on two Raspberry Pi projects.

Expanding FreeBSD Support for Raspberry Pi

Jim’s first project involved porting Raspberry Pi Imager to FreeBSD.

Raspberry Pi Imager provides a graphical way for users to prepare a Raspberry Pi, including selecting a device, choosing an operating system image, configuring settings, and writing the image to storage.

Before Jim’s work, the application supported Linux, macOS, and Windows, but not FreeBSD natively.

His task was to add a FreeBSD backend using FreeBSD-specific libraries and functionality. The goal was to make a native version available through the FreeBSD Ports Collection rather than relying on another operating system’s version through a compatibility layer. The resulting changes are currently under review for inclusion upstream.

His second project took him even deeper into hardware: bringing FreeBSD support to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5.

That work required adding support for components including the Raspberry Pi 5’s PCIe controller and RP1 southbridge, which manages access to peripherals such as Ethernet and USB.

By the time Jim reflected on the project, he was confident that the PCIe controller was working, while memory allocation for devices connected through the RP1 remained an ongoing challenge.

Learning to Understand the “Why”

For Jim, the biggest reward wasn’t one patch or technical milestone.

It was being able to look back and see how much more he understood.

As a first-year student entering a large operating system codebase, there were inevitably pieces that initially didn’t make sense. Over the course of the internship, reading code, writing code, studying documentation, and asking questions gradually changed that.

He reached a point where he could not only explain what his code was doing, but why it needed to be there.

That growth also changed some of his assumptions about FreeBSD.

Before the internship, Jim viewed FreeBSD largely as an operating system for a relatively stable world of amd64 servers. Working with arm64 showed him how much development is happening underneath FreeBSD’s consistent user-facing experience.

He encountered evolving interrupt and clock frameworks, different approaches to device enumeration, and interfaces that have changed considerably over the Project’s history.

“Just taking time to explore how much is boiling in the code under the always-calm, always-consistent user-accessible surface of the operating system has been pretty amazing,” he said.

Finding the Problem Before Finding the Solution

One of the most important lessons Jim learned was that solving a technical problem often starts with figuring out exactly what the problem is.

For the Raspberry Pi Imager work, FreeBSD’s documentation gave him a strong starting point. Man pages, the FreeBSD Handbook, existing scripts, and other resources helped him gradually understand FreeBSD’s disk architecture.

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 was more difficult.

Because components such as Broadcom’s BCM2712 and Raspberry Pi’s RP1 are relatively new, detailed technical documentation could be difficult to find. Jim supplemented what was available by reading about driver development, studying similar drivers, and asking experienced developers for guidance.

“More often than not, it’s easier to ask someone why something needs to be done than to wizard out the intention from the code they write,” he said.

He also learned to make his development process more efficient.

Early in the internship, rebuilding the FreeBSD kernel locally could take minutes for an incremental build and hours for a clean build. Moving compilation to the Foundation’s build servers reduced those waits significantly.

Jim then automated repetitive steps in his workflow, including building, booting the Raspberry Pi, mounting disks, copying files, and unmounting them.

Those improvements did more than save time. They made experimentation easier and gave him more room to focus on understanding the underlying technical problems.

Meeting the Community Behind the Code

Jim also attended BSDCan and the FreeBSD Developer Summit during his internship.

Initially, the experience was intimidating.

Only about a month into the internship, Jim found himself surrounded by people who had been developing and using FreeBSD for decades. But that feeling changed as he began talking with community members.

“If you have something to talk about, it’s more likely than not that someone will be excited to talk you through it and discuss whatever you had on your mind,” he said.

He attended sessions covering topics ranging from security and capability pointers to static analysis, formal verification, hardware support, and the future of FreeBSD’s scheduler.

What surprised him most was how social the events were. Rather than simply listening to presentations, much of the value came from discussions, questions, feedback, and conversations with other attendees.

“Definitely much more immersive than the 9-5 university-style lectures I anticipated.”

Making Open Source Feel More Accessible

Working directly with the FreeBSD community also changed Jim’s perception of contributing to open source.

From the outside, large projects can sometimes appear intimidating or reserved for highly experienced developers. His experience with FreeBSD was different.

“The people are nice,” he said. “They are willing to give you mentorship and to give some thought to patches you submit.”

The internship also gave him a greater appreciation for the broader open source ecosystem and how much software depends on projects maintained by relatively small groups of contributors.

For Jim, that highlighted both the importance of open source and the need for more people to contribute their time, expertise, and support.

His Advice: Start the Conversation

Jim’s advice for students thinking about contributing to FreeBSD is straightforward: reach out.

“I think that if you’re thinking about getting involved yourself, you should really bite the bullet and email someone involved in the project.”

Using FreeBSD itself can also reveal opportunities to contribute. If something doesn’t work as expected, investigating why could lead to a first bug fix or patch.

For those interested in a particular area, Jim recommends looking through development activity to find the people working on that part of the system and asking where help is needed.

The important part is starting somewhere.

Plenty More to Explore

Jim doesn’t plan for his FreeBSD work to end with the internship.

He hopes to continue improving Raspberry Pi 5 and RP1 support, create ports for software he would like to use on FreeBSD, and investigate issues he has encountered while running FreeBSD on his own hardware.

He is also interested in eventually exploring the FreeBSD network stack, scheduling, and resource management.

As for his career, Jim is still early in his studies and keeping his options open, but systems programming and formal methods are areas he would like to continue exploring.

A Summer of Exploration

Jim credits Ed Maste and Siva Mahadevan for giving him the opportunity and supporting him throughout the internship. He also thanked Bjoern Zeeb, Adrian Chadd, Sheng-Yi Hung, and Minsoo Choo, along with fellow interns Sourojeet Adhikari and Nimish Jain, for their guidance, technical help, and willingness to exchange ideas.

The FreeBSD Foundation would also like to thank Jim for his contributions throughout the semester. We appreciate the curiosity, dedication, and persistence he brought to his work, as well as his willingness to take on new challenges and explore different areas of the FreeBSD Project.

Looking back, Jim describes the internship as challenging at times, but ultimately an opportunity to learn in a way that would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

He appreciated the flexibility of the work, the emphasis on independent exploration, and the freedom to experiment without being afraid of getting everything right immediately.

“I feel that the time I got to pursue the bits I’m interested in, to try things out without fear of repercussions, and to pore over technical goodies was a valuable experience for my first internship,” he said.

For someone who started programming by experimenting with a graphing calculator, that curiosity remains at the center of Jim’s work.

Only now, the system he’s exploring is a little bigger.

The post FreeBSD Foundation Intern Jim Huang Chen on Raspberry Pi Support and Open Source first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

An Update on the FreeBSD Journal: New Editor, New Format

Florine Kamdem — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 20:16:39 +0000

We have a couple of updates to share about the FreeBSD Journal.

A New Editor

Please join us in welcoming Matt Slaybaugh as the Journal’s new editor. Matt brings years of editorial and content management experience, including his ongoing work with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and he’s already hard at work on upcoming issues.

A Streamlined, Browser-Based Format

You may have noticed that our latest issue, Improving Software Quality, was only available in HTML, with no downloadable PDF. That wasn’t an oversight. Going forward, the Journal is moving to a browser-based-only format: the same great content, delivered directly on our website.

We know some of you will miss having a PDF to save or read offline, and we appreciate hearing that feedback. Streamlining how we produce the Journal lets our small team put more energy into the content itself: recruiting authors, editing articles, and keeping the Journal free for everyone, which remains a top priority.

What Stays the Same

Everything else about the Journal continues as it has: published quarterly, always free, and guided by our editorial board, chaired by John Baldwin, and our advisory board. You can read every issue on our Browser-Based Edition page.

Questions about the transition? Reach out to Matt directly at journaleditor@freebsdfoundation.org.

The post An Update on the FreeBSD Journal: New Editor, New Format first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

BSDCan 2026 Travel Report – Novković

Florine Kamdem — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 05:54:13 +0000

This year, I had the great privilege of receiving the FreeBSD Foundation travel grant to attend BSDCan.

The conference informally kicked off with the traditional gathering at the Father & Sons bar near the 90U residence on Tuesday. The first day of the FreeBSD developer summit opened with Nicholas Carlini’s talk about LLM-driven security analysis in the FreeBSD kernel, setting the tone for the remainder of the first devsummit day. Alpha-Omega’s Michael Winser continued this discussion from an open-source maintainer’s perspective, outlining strategies for dealing with the torrential influx of LLM-reported vulnerabilities. After a brief lunch break, the summit continued with Vince Milum’s presentation about building a Raspberry Pi-based GPS NTP server appliance using FreeBSD. The overview of his journey in applying FreeBSD to such an unorthodox use case was interesting and highlighted a few rough edges when using FreeBSD in embedded computing.

The summit continued with the Foundation’s yearly overview and an update from the srcmgr team, after which I spent some time catching up with a few colleagues in the hallways. The first day was capped off by a pizza dinner at the 90U lounge.

The second day of the devsummit began with an overview of the current state of the FreeBSD project’s infrastructure and the ongoing efforts to expand its use of cloud resources. After two “Have/Need/Want” planning sessions, I attended Olivier Certner’s talk about his ongoing work in the scheduler.
The devsummit concluded with a round of shorter talks about planned work in the network stack, extended kernel errors, and virtual memory improvements from Netflix. The day concluded with a hacking session at the 90U lounge that lasted well into the night.

The first day of the conference began with Sean Howard’s talk about accessibility tooling that allowed them to use OpenBSD while recovering from eye surgery. Next up was Martin Vahlensieck’s talk about his new tool for creating temporary VMs on FreeBSD. After a short lunch break, I attended Henning Brauer’s talk about OpenNTPD and its now 20+ years of history. Following a short break in the quiet room, I attended Colin Percival’s talk about the turbulent FreeBSD 15.0 release process. The day once again concluded in the hacker lounge, where I also spent some time talking to Mark Johnston and John Baldwin about our ongoing srcmgr activities.

The final day of the conference began with Allan Jude’s talk about the recently introduced ZFS AnyRAID feature. Next up was Olivier Certner’s talk about the ongoing work to support hibernation on FreeBSD.
The talk explored the implementation details in a lot of depth, and I was particularly astonished by the amount of groundwork needed to add proper hibernate support in the kernel. After lunch, I attended John Baldwin’s talk on thread-local storage. Another one of John’s fantastic ELF-related talks, it went into the gory details, behind TLS support in various parts of FreeBSD.

The penultimate talk of the day was another by Martin Vahlensieck, this time dealing with a deep dive into a seemingly trivial operation – writing to /dev/null. The talk was put together exceptionally well and did a great job of presenting complicated operating system concepts to a varied audience of users and developers. The last talk of the day was Jaeyoon Choi’s talk about adding Universal Flash Storage support to FreeBSD, after which we slowly started heading to the closing reception.

Attending this year’s BSDCan provided me with plenty of new project ideas for the near future and reinvigorated my drive to contribute to the project.
Once again, thank you to the FreeBSD Foundation for sponsoring my attendance this year.

The post BSDCan 2026 Travel Report – Novković first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

BSDCan 2026 Travel Report – Patrick McEvoy

Florine Kamdem — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 05:48:02 +0000

The June 2026 FreeBSD DevSummit & BSDCan was again successfully recorded and streamed through longtime streaming sponsor ScaleEngine. The requested DevSummit 2 question microphone system kept our running around to a minimum and fit the two rows of DMS1160. We got to see CheriBSD hardware again, in fact, Brooks Davis presented from a CheriBSD box. This year, the DevSummit focused more on AI integration than in previous years. Community member Warner Losh, in particular, gave an interesting talk about how he has used AI to help resolve an issue he was facing. I will refer you to the video posted to the FreeBSD YouTube channel for more details.

Community members Michael Williams and AV Lead Andrew Fengler lent us the mixing boards, which gave us the control we needed, so speakers, both low and enthusiastic, were heard clearly. This year’s hardware collection included community-donated hardware and personal hardware lent for the event. BSDCan fundraiser-in-chief Michael Dexter brought everything from home that the TSA would let him, and my bags were so full, I didn’t have room for my customary roll(s) of gaffer tape.

BSDCan has been successfully building attendee numbers year over year, with just shy of 170 for 2026. My fondest memory of the conference as part of the very hard working organization committee, was seeing Henning pull our shawarma vendor aside to deliver effusive praise for what many agreed was a fantastic lunch on Saturday.

Other highlights:
– additional sleep support for the Framework laptop (Thank you, Devon!)
– one of the smoothest AV team activations I have ever seen at a conference.
– improved social media tie-in via both IRC and Discord
(Many thanks to Charlie Li, Setesh, & and a team of Discord volunteers)
– Nearly $2,000 raised for local charities.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have 4 days of videos to edit and post to the web.
Be well,
Patrick McEvoy bsdtv / bsdcan 2026 con chair

The post BSDCan 2026 Travel Report – Patrick McEvoy first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

BSDCan 2026 Trip Report – ShengYi Hung

Florine Kamdem — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 05:40:54 +0000

I’m really grateful to the FreeBSD Foundation for sponsoring my trip to BSDCan 2026 in Ottawa. The conference ran for four days — two days of DevSummit, then two days of the main conference, with many interesting talks throughout. For me, it’s mainly a chance to talk with developers I don’t otherwise get to reach in day-to-day work. This was my third time attending, and I was happy to be back again.

This year’s DevSummit felt a little different from previous years. A number of sessions touched on how AI is influencing project maintainability. Some of that influence is positive — vulnerability research came up as one example — but it’s also adding real burden on the reviewer side. Hearing different opinions from different people gave me a much broader view of the issue than I had going in.

This was also my first DevSummit as a src committer, so on day two, I got to take part in “Have Need Want” — the usual BSDCan session for this — and present my own work for review along with my plans for the next release. That covered updates to our USB stack, LLVM, CPU power throttling, and bhyve. I also got some feedback privately afterward, which drew a bit of welcome attention from other developers.

On the first day of the main conference, the talk I found most interesting was “Heterogeneous Scheduling on FreeBSD” by Minsoo Choo. It wasn’t really about the scheduler itself, but it got into something just as important: how heterogeneous core information should feed into the scheduler, and where and how that should happen. It reminded me that my CPU throttling work needs the same kind of information. Right now, the idea is to raise performance parameters as fast as possible under load, and back off while idle to save power. On a non-heterogeneous system, that only means tracking idle time. But on a heterogeneous system, cores differ in performance, which changes how we translate an abstract performance instruction into something a given core can act on — and that in turn affects how the cpufreq interface makes its decisions. I was glad to hear that there are already interfaces that provide heterogeneous-core hints for throttling, and I’m hoping to fold that into my future work.

On day two, I went to “Return of the Segment: Thread Local Storage” by jhb@. Since I also work on LLVM ELF internals, it was great to finally get a clear picture of how Thread Local Storage actually works under our libc++ ABI. jhb@ walked through it well — starting from thread-local errno and building up to a compiler-guided ELF TLS design. Afterward, we talked about whether we should move errno over to compiler-based TLS.

All in all, it was a great trip, with many good conversations with other developers. Thanks again to the Foundation for making it possible for me to be there.

Respectfully,

ShengYi Hung

The post BSDCan 2026 Trip Report – ShengYi Hung first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

Understanding the Foundation Board’s Role in the FreeBSD Ecosystem

Anne Dickison — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 01:53:55 +0000

During BSDCan, the FreeBSD Foundation holds its annual meeting and Board elections. Following this year’s meeting, we are pleased to welcome Dave Cottlehuber to the FreeBSD Foundation Board of Directors. Take a minute to read this interview with Dave to learn more about his involvement with FreeBSD and why he joined the Foundation Board of Directors.

This transition also provides an opportunity to explain how the Foundation Board operates, how board members are elected, and how the Board’s role differs from Foundation staff and FreeBSD Project leadership. These distinctions are not always obvious from the outside, and we want to provide a clearer explanation of how the Foundation is governed.

The Foundation Board exists to help the organization make thoughtful, responsible decisions for the long term. It brings together people with different experiences and perspectives to help the Foundation stay focused, accountable, and connected to the broader FreeBSD ecosystem.

Project Leadership, Foundation Staff, and the Foundation Board

The FreeBSD Foundation is part of the broader FreeBSD ecosystem, working alongside the FreeBSD Project, contributors, users, companies, and community members to help FreeBSD thrive.

The FreeBSD Project leads the operating system’s technical direction, including the source tree, releases, technical priorities, and Project governance.

The Foundation is a separate nonprofit organization with its own programs, staff, and Board. Foundation staff carry out the organization’s day-to-day work, including software development work, advocacy, fundraising, communications, events, operations, grants, partnerships, and program management.

The Foundation Board provides governance, oversight, and strategic direction for the Foundation. The Board does not govern the FreeBSD Project, make technical decisions for FreeBSD, direct committers, or manage staff’s daily work. Instead, it approves the annual budget, helps guide the Foundation’s priorities, and ensures the organization is using its resources responsibly and in alignment with its mission.

Each group has a distinct role, but all are part of the same FreeBSD ecosystem and are working toward FreeBSD’s long-term success.

What the Foundation Board Does

Board members review and approve the Foundation’s annual budget, provide input on organizational strategy, and help evaluate major priorities. They also support the Foundation’s work in areas such as fundraising, governance, sustainability, community relationships, and long-term planning.

A strong Board brings a mix of experience and perspective. This may include knowledge of FreeBSD and open source communities, nonprofit governance, finance, fundraising, legal and policy issues, business development, technology strategy, security, and organizational growth.

As the Foundation and the FreeBSD ecosystem continue to evolve, the Board considers what skills and perspectives would strengthen its ability to guide the organization. This helps ensure the Board remains well-positioned to provide thoughtful oversight and help the Foundation plan responsibly for the future.

How Board Members Are Identified and Elected

Board members are elected by the current Board at the Foundation’s annual meeting.

The process leading up to the election is intentional and ongoing. Current board members discuss the needs of the organization, consider the experience already represented on the Board, and identify areas where additional expertise or perspective may be useful.

The Board also meets with individuals who may be interested in serving. These conversations may include people from within the FreeBSD community as well as individuals outside the community who bring relevant experience that could benefit the Foundation.

The goal is not simply to fill a seat. It is to build and maintain a Board that can provide thoughtful governance, contribute useful perspectives, and help guide the Foundation in ways that benefit the long-term health of FreeBSD.

Potential board members are generally people who understand the importance of FreeBSD, care about the Foundation’s work, and are willing to take an active role in helping the organization succeed.

What Board Members Are Expected to Do

Serving on the FreeBSD Foundation Board is a volunteer role, but it carries important responsibilities.

Board members are expected to attend meetings, review materials in advance, participate in discussions, and remain engaged between meetings. They are also expected to bring their experience, judgment, and networks to the Foundation’s work when those contributions are helpful.

This may include providing feedback on strategic questions, helping think through organizational challenges, supporting fundraising efforts, making introductions, or advising staff and fellow board members on areas where they have relevant expertise.

Effective board service does not mean directing staff’s daily work. It means helping ensure the Foundation has the resources, structure, guidance, and accountability needed to carry out its work well.

Why This Matters

Good governance is not always the most visible part of the Foundation’s work, but it is essential.

The Foundation is trusted with donor funds, community expectations, and an important role within the FreeBSD ecosystem. A strong Board helps ensure the Foundation is planning responsibly, making thoughtful decisions, and remaining focused on work that benefits FreeBSD.

As the needs of the FreeBSD ecosystem continue to grow and change, the Foundation Board will continue to look for the right mix of experience, perspective, and commitment to help guide the organization forward.

We are grateful to everyone who serves or has expressed interest in serving the Foundation in this capacity. While much of this work happens behind the scenes, it plays an important role in keeping the Foundation strong, sustainable, and prepared to contribute to FreeBSD’s long-term success.

The post Understanding the Foundation Board’s Role in the FreeBSD Ecosystem first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

FreeBSD Foundation Welcomes New Board Member: Dave Cottlehuber

Anne Dickison — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 01:32:52 +0000

FreeBSD Community member and former Core Representative, Dave Cottlehuber, was elected to the FreeBSD Foundation Board during the Annual Meeting on June 15, 2026. We sat down with Dave to learn more about his history with FreeBSD and what he’s most looking forward to accomplishing during his tenure.

Tell us a little about yourself, and how you got involved with FreeBSD?

I’m a relative newcomer to FreeBSD. I didn’t use it at university, and I only started my UNIX experience in early 2001, with an OpenBSD 2.8 CD and poster.

I spent most of my teens and early twenties climbing mountains and skiing down them. Computers were of little interest to me at that time, but midway through a Science degree, I found my niche, and eventually started working part time at the University computer centre.

I remember a colleague eagerly rushing through with a FreeBSD CD, probably 3.something, in 1998 or 1999, but that was as close as I came.

The next decade was a move from New Zealand through France, Slovak Republic, and back to New Zealand, and in parallel, shifting from hands-on tech, into middle management, at various large corporations and telcos.

In 2010 I made an intentional decision to move away from that, and moved to working with open source software projects, and communities, in part to allow us to relocate back to Europe.

Around 2013 I actively switched to FreeBSD, and made it to my first BSDCan conference in 2016. The first people I met there were Peter Hessler from OpenBSD, Mark Linimon and Li-Wen Hsu from FreeBSD. With such friendly introductions, I was hooked!

Under Joseph Mingrone’s mentorship, I gained a ports commit bit in 2017, and became progressively more involved. In 2024, I began helping out with release engineering, under Colin Percival’s watchful eye, and in mid 2024 I also joined the FreeBSD Core team, for my first term.

This brought me into contact with a much broader range of people, within the community, the Foundation, and the wider project, and the complexities of both understanding and running such a distributed group of people.

Why are you passionate about serving on the FreeBSD Foundation Board?

The FreeBSD community was an unexpected, but very welcome, engagement later in my life.

Much of our daily commercial work is necessarily focused on delivering to shareholders and customers, and it’s both satisfying and important to do things for the long term, to contribute to the common good. I get a great deal of personal satisfaction out of helping and seeing people, and the project itself, thrive.

What excites you about our work?

The Foundation operates on a longer timescale than most of us get to work on day-to-day — funding development that wouldn’t otherwise happen, supporting infrastructure, advocacy, and the conferences that hold the community together. Bringing people and organisations together for that kind of long-term work doesn’t happen overnight, and being part of it is a unique opportunity.

What are you hoping to bring to the organization and the community through your new leadership role?

I don’t see this as a new leadership role so much as a continuation — a branch, if you will, of my existing involvement. Coming to the board directly from Core, I hope to help strengthen the connections between the Foundation, the developers, our users, and the wider community, and to keep fostering a shared sense of identity and purpose across them all.

How do you see your background and experience complementing the current board?

Helping people understand each other’s strengths and perspectives, and finding ways to be successful together as FreeBSD, is challenging work — and genuinely rewarding.

I’ve worked on a number of transition and transformation programmes over the years, both technical and people-focused, and more recently in open source community building. I’m looking to bring both a community context and an active contributor’s viewpoint to the board, and to continue working across ‘the whole project’ in the widest possible sense.

The post FreeBSD Foundation Welcomes New Board Member: Dave Cottlehuber first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

Represent FreeBSD in Your Community

Florine Kamdem — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:10:16 +0000

Teaching others about FreeBSD and helping it grow doesn’t require a developer background — it just takes someone willing to show up and talk about why this project matters. Whether that’s presenting at a local meetup or bringing FreeBSD into a classroom, community advocacy is one of the most effective ways we grow the project.

Is There a Local Event Where You Could Represent FreeBSD?

Is there a meetup, conference, or user group in your area where FreeBSD could use a voice? We’re always looking for community members willing to represent the project locally, whether that means giving a talk, staffing a table, or simply striking up conversations about FreeBSD. If you’re speaking about FreeBSD at an upcoming event, let us know; we can help spread the word, and our Travel Grant program may be able to help cover the cost of getting there.

Thinking About Hosting a Table or Booth?

If you’d like to run a FreeBSD community table at an event, you don’t have to figure it out from scratch. We’ve put together a set of Community Table Guidelines covering everything from talking points and etiquette to what to bring and how to handle tricky questions, so you can focus on the conversations instead of the logistics. Reach out to marketing@freebsdfoundation.org for a copy, and don’t forget to grab logos, stickers, and other materials before you go.

Bring FreeBSD to Your Class or Club

We’re also launching a new way to connect with students directly. If you’re a student who’d like someone from the FreeBSD community to speak virtually to your class or club, you can now request a virtual speaker through our new speaker request form. Whether your group wants an introduction to FreeBSD, a walkthrough of installing it for the first time, or a conversation about careers in open source, we’ll match you with someone from the community who can join your class or meeting remotely.

Advocacy doesn’t have to be complicated. A five-minute conversation with a professor, a slide deck at a local user group, or a sticker handed out at a hackathon all move the project forward. Ready to get involved?

Request a virtual speaker, tell us about your event, or reach out to marketing@freebsdfoundation.org with questions.

The post Represent FreeBSD in Your Community first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.

EuroBSDCon 2026 Travel Grant Open

Florine Kamdem — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:24:36 +0000

The Travel Grant Application for EuroBSDCon 2026 is now open. The Foundation can help you attend EuroBSDCon through our travel grant program. Travel grants are available to FreeBSD developers and advocates who need assistance with travel expenses for attending conferences related to FreeBSD development. Applications are due July 7, 2026. Find out more and apply today.

Did you know the Foundation also provides grants for other technical events? If you feel that your attendance at one of these events will benefit the FreeBSD Project and Community, and you need assistance getting there, please fill out the general travel grant application. Your application must be received 7 weeks prior to the event.

The post EuroBSDCon 2026 Travel Grant Open first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.