The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization + dedicated to supporting and promoting the &os; 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 &os; contributors. The Foundation purchases and + supports hardware to improve and maintain &os; + infrastructure; publishes marketing material to promote, + educate, and advocate for the &os; Project; facilitates + collaboration between commercial vendors and &os; + developers; and finally, represents the &os; 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 &os; last + quarter:
+ +Fundraising Efforts
+ +Our work is 100% funded by your donations. We raised + $1,527,540 in 2016 from 1471 donors! Thank you to everyone who + made a donation to help us continue our efforts in 2017 to + support the &os; Project and community worldwide! You can + make a donation here to our 2017 fundraising campaign: https://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/donate/.
+ +OS Improvements
+ +The Foundation improves the &os; operating system by + employing our technical staff to maintain and improve critical + kernel subsystems, add features and functionality, and fix + problems. This also includes funding separate project grants + like the arm64 port, blacklistd access control + daemon, and integration of VIMAGE support, to make sure &os; + remains a viable solution for research, education, computing, + products and more.
+ +Large projects supported last year include:
+ +The Foundation team worked on a technology roadmap for + 2017–2018 during our board meeting in November.
+ +Staff and board members continued hosting bi-weekly + conference calls to facilitate efforts for individuals to + collaborate on different technologies.
+ +You can find out more about the support we provided by + reading individual updates from Ed Maste, Konstatin Belousov, + and Edward Napierala in this report.
+ +Release Engineering
+ +The Foundation provides a full-time staff member to lead the + release engineering efforts. This has provided timely and + reliable releases over the last few years.
+ +Last quarter, our full-time staff member worked with the + &os; Release Engineering and Security Teams to finalize the + 11.0-RELEASE. He also added support for the powerpcspe + architecture to the 12-CURRENT snapshot builds, and continued + work on packaging the base system with pkg(8). He + also continued producing 10-STABLE, 11-STABLE, and 12-CURRENT + development snapshot builds throughout the quarter.
+ +You can find out more about the support we provided to the + Release Engineering Team by reading their status update in this + report.
+ +Supporting &os; Infrastructure
+ +The Foundation provides hardware and support to improve the + &os; infrastructure. This year, we purchased the following + hardware to improve the build, continuous integration, and + platform processes:
+ +&os; 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 &os;; producing advocacy literature to teach people + about &os; and help make the path to starting using &os; or + contributing to the Project easier; and attending and getting + other &os; contributors to volunteer to run &os; events, + staff &os; tables, and give &os; presentations.
+ +Here is a list highlighting some of the advocacy and + education work we did last year:
+ +We published our September/October and November/December + Journal issues at https://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/journal/.
+ +We also published monthly newsletters to highlight work being + done to support &os;, tell you about upcoming events, and + provide other information to keep you in the loop of what we + are doing to support the &os; Project and community: https://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/news-and-events/newsletter/.
+ +Conferences and Events
+ +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 &os; 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-&os; events to promote and raise awareness about + &os;, to increase the use of &os; in different + applications, and to recruit more contributors to the + Project.
+ +We also sponsored and/or attended the following events last + quarter:
+ +Get the whole list of conferences we supported in 2016 at: https://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/blog/recap-of-2016-advocacy-efforts/.
+ +Legal/&os; IP
+ +The Foundation owns the &os; trademarks, and it is our + responsibility to protect them. We continued to review requests + and grant permission to use the trademarks. We also provided + legal support for the core team, to investigate the status of + certain patents.
+ +&os; Community Engagement
+ +Anne Dickison, our Marketing Director, has been overseeing + the efforts to rewrite the Project's Code of Conduct to help + make this a safe, inclusive, and welcoming community. The + updated Code of Conduct and Report Guidelines are going through + the final review process, and will be handed off to the Core + Team for approval in Q1 2017.
+ +Go to http://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org + to find out how we support &os; and how we can help you!
+ +