The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit + organization dedicated to supporting and promoting + the FreeBSD Project and community worldwide. + Funding comes from individual and corporate + donations and is used to fund and manage software + development projects, conferences and developer + summits, and provide travel grants to FreeBSD + contributors. The Foundation purchases and + supports hardware to improve and maintain FreeBSD + infrastructure and provides resources to improve + security, quality assurance, and release + engineering efforts; publishes marketing material + to promote, educate, and advocate for the FreeBSD + Project; facilitates collaboration between + commercial vendors and FreeBSD developers; and + finally, represents the FreeBSD Project in + executing contracts, license agreements, and other + legal arrangements that require a recognized legal + entity.
+ +Here are some highlights of what we did to help FreeBSD + last quarter:
+ +We held our annual board meeting in Ottawa on May 14. + Board Director and Officer elections take place + each year at this meeting. Justin Gibbs was + elected as the new President of the Board of + Directors. The new FreeBSD Foundation Board of + Directors includes President and Founder Justin T. + Gibbs, Vice President Benedict Reuschling, + Secretary Philip Paeps, Treasurer Marshall Kirk + McKusick, and Directors Hiroki Sato, George + Neville-Neil and Robert N. M. Watson. You can read + more + about the elections.
+ +After the elections, our management team gave updates to + the board on their respective areas. We then + discussed the key areas of the Project that need + help, and where we can step in to fill those + holes. We reviewed and updated our 12 month goals, + and identified projects we should support. We then + discussed conferences we are likely to attend, and + went over the latest on our fundraising efforts. + We followed that up with a discussion on how to + get more users to contribute back to the Project. + While discussing how to increase the number of + users and contributors, we talked about methods + for making for more training material available.
+ ++ Partnerships and Commercial User Support
++ We help facilitate collaboration between commercial users + and FreeBSD developers. We also meet with + companies to discuss their needs and bring that + information back to the Project. In Q2, Ed Maste + and Deb Goodkin met with a few commercial users in + Germany. It’s not only beneficial for the above, + but it also helps us understand some of the + applications where FreeBSD is used. Because BSDCan + brings in a high number of commercial users, we + have an excellent opportunity to have similar + discussions about their needs during the four-day + FreeBSD Summit and BSDCan.
+ ++ Fundraising Efforts
++ Our work is 100% funded by your donations. We are grateful + for the generous donations from Intel, NetApp, + VMware and Stormshield last quarter. We are + working hard to get more commercial users to give + back to help us continue our work supporting + FreeBSD. More importantly, we’d like to thank + our individual donors, for making $10-$1,000 + donations last quarter, for a total of $16,000!
+ +Please consider making a donation to help us + continue and + increase our support for FreeBSD.
+ +We also have the + Partnership + Program to provide more + benefits for our larger commercial donors. + Find out more information at the link and share with your + companies!
+ +OS Improvements
++ The Foundation improves the FreeBSD operating system by + employing our technical staff to maintain and + improve critical kernel subsystems, add features + and functionality, and fix problems. The + Foundation also provides grants to fund individual + projects.
+ +There were 243 commits to the FreeBSD base system + repository sponsored by the Foundation during the + quarter. These include improvements to the tmpfs + in-memory, MSDOS, and UFS filesystems, device + driver and hardware compatibility fixes, virtual + memory (VM), tool chain, documentation, and + testing and continuous integration improvements.
+ +We fixed a number of race conditions and security issues + found by Syzkaller, Google’s + code-coverage-guided system call fuzzer.
+ +Alan Somers’ work on updating FreeBSD’s support for + FUSE (userspace filesystems) continued during the + quarter; the full details are elsewhere in this + quarterly report. At this point most of the work + has been committed to the project branch but some + bug fixes and improvements have been committed + directly to the FreeBSD development branch.
+ +Edward Napierala’s Linuxulator project continued through + the quarter, resulting in a number of improvements + to the Linuxulator and linux-specific + functionality such as linsysfs. This work is part + of the path to supporting the Linux strace + debugging tool in order to facilitate debugging + failures of other Linux binaries under the + Linuxulator. Mateusz Guzik continued with + scalability and performance improvements during + the quarter, and Bjoern Zeeb integrated the SDIO + stack (with details elsewhere in the quarterly + report).
+ +Progress was made on the online RAID-Z expansion project + over the quarter. Matt Ahrens posted an alpha + preview of the feature for further + experimentation and review, and the FreeBSD + Foundation will make an alpha release image + available for testing in the near future.
+ +Foundation staff contributed to nine FreeBSD security + advisories and errata updates over the quarter, + including CPU vulnerability workarounds. Related + work included improving Intel microcode update + loading.
+ +Continuous Integration and Quality Assurance
++ The Foundation provides a full-time staff member who is + working on improving our automated testing, + continuous integration, and overall quality + assurance efforts.
+ +During the second quarter of 2019, Foundation staff + continued to improve the project's CI + infrastructure, worked with contributors to fix + the failing build and test cases, and worked with + other teams in the Project for their testing + needs. We hosted a CI-focused working group at + BSDcan and continue to publish the CI weekly + report at freebsd-testing@ + mailing list.
+ +See the FreeBSD CI section of this report for more + information.
+ ++ Supporting FreeBSD Infrastructure
++ The Foundation provides hardware and support to improve + the FreeBSD infrastructure. Last quarter, we + continued supporting FreeBSD hardware located + around the world.
+ +FreeBSD Advocacy and Education
++ A large part of our efforts are dedicated to advocating + for the Project. This includes promoting work + being done by others with FreeBSD; producing + advocacy literature to teach people about FreeBSD + and help make the path to starting using FreeBSD + or contributing to the Project easier; and + attending and getting other FreeBSD contributors + to volunteer to run FreeBSD events, staff FreeBSD + tables, and give FreeBSD presentations.
+ +The FreeBSD Foundation sponsors many conferences, events, + and summits around the globe. These events can be + BSD-related, open source, or technology events + geared towards underrepresented groups. We support + the FreeBSD-focused events to help provide a venue + for sharing knowledge, to work together on + projects, and to facilitate collaboration between + developers and commercial users. This all helps + provide a healthy ecosystem. We support the + non-FreeBSD events to promote and raise awareness + of FreeBSD, to increase the use of FreeBSD in + different applications, and to recruit more + contributors to the Project.
+ +Check out some of the advocacy and education work we did + last quarter:
+ ++ We continued producing FreeBSD advocacy material to help + people promote FreeBSD around the world.
+ +Read more about our conference adventures in the + conference recaps and trip reports in our + monthly + newsletters.
+ +We help educate the world about FreeBSD by publishing the + professionally produced FreeBSD Journal. As we + mentioned previously, the FreeBSD Journal is now a + free publication. Find out more and access the + latest issues at + https://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/journal/.
+ +You can find out more about + events + we attended and upcoming events.
+ +We have continued our work with a new website developer to + help us improve our website. Work has begun to + make it easier for community members to find + information more easily and to make the site more + efficient.
+ +Legal/FreeBSD IP
++ The Foundation owns the FreeBSD trademarks, and it is our + responsibility to protect them. We also provide + legal support for the core team to investigate + questions that arise.
+ +Go to http://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org to find out how we + support FreeBSD and how we can help you!
+ + +