Almost 12 years of the New York City *BSD User Group (NYC*BUG) provides a useful perspective on the *BSD ecosystem.
NYC*BUG is a technical user group in New York City. We conduct monthly meetings and held five conferences in various forms, plus maintain various mailing lists.
We also manage a full cabinet at New York Internet hosting a number of projects, such as the BSD Certification Group and array of mirrors.
Our position provides a multitude of angles on FreeBSD usage in the New York metropolitan area, from endusers exploring FreeBSD for the first time to enterprise infrastructures relying on FreeBSD. We manage to attract both the experienced and those dipping their toes into the *BSD water for the first time. While NYC*BUG plants a flag and maintains a steady *BSD presence, we benefit from the increased interest and reliance on FreeBSD as a stable, sane operating system. This is particularly true over the past few years, with the role of FreeBSD at Netflix and support for FreeBSD at the cloud service provider Digital Ocean, not to mention firms like Xinuos and New York Internet which rely heavily on the project.
FreeBSD’s reputation plays a critical role in our long-term sustainability. We know our organizational abilities and own particular technical duties only goes so far. Continuing development from 64-bit ARM to the new pkg system means providing us the fuel to continue our prominent role in New York’s technical community.
More generally, we point to the FreeBSD project and Foundation as solid models for scaling open source projects, unlike so many flash-in-the-pan projects that get cold as quickly as they got hot.
The FreeBSD Foundation provides regular support for our larger events. We are excited to continue working hand-in-hand with the broader FreeBSD technical community and the Foundation.
– NYC*BUG’s Admin@ Group, NYC*BUG
