The Foundation sponsored Edward Napiarala for his work to provide support for headless operation in the form of USB On The Go (USB OTG) functionality. While FreeBSD did have OTG support, it was not enabled or configured by default, and often failed to work correctly. This made using FreeBSD on embedded devices, such as the RaspberryPi Zero, cumbersome.
This project aimed to add out-of-box USB OTG support, making FreeBSD a much more attractive option for both newbies lacking the equipment to set up headless operation and companies looking for a more user friendly option.
The successful completion of this project means the user can simply download the image, copy it onto the SD card, connect the board to their laptop using a MicroUSB cable and… that’s it: console and network would appear as virtual USB devices, ready to be used. This will significantly lower the barrier of entry for newcomers to using FreeBSD on embedded devices, and puts us on par with linux.