<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!--
The FreeBSD Documentation Project
$FreeBSD$
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<chapter id="introduction">
<chapterinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Jim</firstname>
<surname>Mock</surname>
<contrib>Restructured, reorganized, and parts
rewritten by </contrib>
</author>
</authorgroup>
</chapterinfo>
<title>Introduction</title>
<sect1 id="introduction-synopsis">
<title>Synopsis</title>
<para>Thank you for your interest in &os;! The following chapter
covers various aspects of the &os; Project, such as its
history, goals, development model, and so on.</para>
<para>After reading this chapter, you will know:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>How &os; relates to other computer operating
systems.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The history of the &os; Project.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The goals of the &os; Project.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The basics of the &os; open-source development
model.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>And of course: where the name <quote>&os;</quote> comes
from.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="nutshell">
<title>Welcome to &os;!</title>
<indexterm><primary>4.4BSD-Lite</primary></indexterm>
<para>&os; is a 4.4BSD-Lite based operating system for
Intel (x86 and &itanium;), AMD64, Sun
&ultrasparc; computers. Ports to other
architectures are also underway. You can also
read about <link linkend="history">the history of &os;</link>,
or the <link linkend="relnotes">current release</link>. If you
are interested in contributing something to the Project (code,
hardware, funding), see the <ulink
url="&url.articles.contributing;/index.html">Contributing to
&os;</ulink> article.</para>
<sect2 id="os-overview">
<title>What Can &os; Do?</title>
<para>&os; has many noteworthy features. Some of these
are:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>preemptive
multitasking</primary></indexterm>
<para><emphasis>Preemptive multitasking</emphasis> with
dynamic priority adjustment to ensure smooth and fair
sharing of the computer between applications and users,
even under the heaviest of loads.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>multi-user
facilities</primary></indexterm>
<para><emphasis>Multi-user facilities</emphasis> which allow
many people to use a &os; system simultaneously for a
variety of things. This means, for example, that system
peripherals such as printers and tape drives are properly
shared between all users on the system or the network and
that individual resource limits can be placed on users or
groups of users, protecting critical system resources from
over-use.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>TCP/IP networking</primary></indexterm>
<para>Strong <emphasis>TCP/IP networking</emphasis> with
support for industry standards such as SCTP, DHCP, NFS,
NIS, PPP, SLIP, IPsec, and IPv6. This means that your
&os; machine can interoperate easily with other systems as
well as act as an enterprise server, providing vital
functions such as NFS (remote file access) and email
services or putting your organization on the Internet with
WWW, FTP, routing and firewall (security) services.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>memory protection</primary></indexterm>
<para><emphasis>Memory protection</emphasis> ensures that
applications (or users) cannot interfere with each other.
One application crashing will not affect others in any
way.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>&os; is a <emphasis>32-bit</emphasis> operating
system (<emphasis>64-bit</emphasis> on the &itanium;,
AMD64, and &ultrasparc;) and was designed as such from
the ground up.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm>
<primary>X Window System</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>The industry standard <emphasis>X Window
System</emphasis> (X11R7) provides a graphical user
interface (GUI) for the cost of a common VGA card and
monitor and comes with full sources.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm>
<primary>binary compatibility</primary>
<secondary>Linux</secondary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>binary compatibility</primary>
<secondary>SCO</secondary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>binary compatibility</primary>
<secondary>SVR4</secondary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>binary compatibility</primary>
<secondary>BSD/OS</secondary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>binary compatibility</primary>
<secondary>NetBSD</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para><emphasis>Binary compatibility</emphasis> with many
programs built for Linux, SCO, SVR4, BSDI and
NetBSD.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Thousands of <emphasis>ready-to-run</emphasis>
applications are available from the &os;
<emphasis>ports</emphasis> and
<emphasis>packages</emphasis> collection. Why search the
net when you can find it all right here?</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Thousands of additional and
<emphasis>easy-to-port</emphasis> applications are
available on the Internet. &os; is source code compatible
with most popular commercial &unix; systems and thus most
applications require few, if any, changes to
compile.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>virtual memory</primary></indexterm>
<para>Demand paged <emphasis>virtual memory</emphasis> and
<quote>merged VM/buffer cache</quote> design efficiently
satisfies applications with large appetites for memory
while still maintaining interactive response to other
users.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm>
<primary>Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP)</primary>
</indexterm>
<para><emphasis>SMP</emphasis> support for machines with
multiple CPUs.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm>
<primary>compilers</primary>
<secondary>C</secondary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>compilers</primary>
<secondary>C++</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para>A full complement of <emphasis>C</emphasis>
and <emphasis>C++</emphasis>
development tools.
Many additional languages for advanced research
and development are also available in the ports and
packages collection.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>source code</primary></indexterm>
<para><emphasis>Source code</emphasis> for the entire system
means you have the greatest degree of control over your
environment. Why be locked into a proprietary solution
at the mercy of your vendor when you can have a truly open
system?</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Extensive <emphasis>online
documentation</emphasis>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><emphasis>And many more!</emphasis></para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<indexterm><primary>4.4BSD-Lite</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG)</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>U.C. Berkeley</primary></indexterm>
<para>&os; is based on the 4.4BSD-Lite release from Computer
Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California
at Berkeley, and carries on the distinguished tradition of BSD
systems development. In addition to the fine work provided by
CSRG, the &os; Project has put in many thousands of hours
in fine tuning the system for maximum performance and
reliability in real-life load situations. As many of the
commercial giants struggle to field PC operating systems with
such features, performance and reliability, &os; can offer
them <emphasis>now</emphasis>!</para>
<para>The applications to which &os; can be put are truly
limited only by your own imagination. From software
development to factory automation, inventory control to
azimuth correction of remote satellite antennae; if it can be
done with a commercial &unix; product then it is more than
likely that you can do it with &os; too! &os; also benefits
significantly from literally thousands of high quality
applications developed by research centers and universities
around the world, often available at little to no cost.
Commercial applications are also available and appearing in
greater numbers every day.</para>
<para>Because the source code for &os; itself is generally
available, the system can also be customized to an almost
unheard of degree for special applications or projects, and in
ways not generally possible with operating systems from most
major commercial vendors. Here is just a sampling of some of
the applications in which people are currently using
&os;:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para><emphasis>Internet Services:</emphasis> The robust
TCP/IP networking built into &os; makes it an ideal
platform for a variety of Internet services such
as:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>FTP servers</primary></indexterm>
<para>FTP servers</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>web servers</primary></indexterm>
<para>World Wide Web servers (standard or secure
[SSL])</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>IPv4 and IPv6 routing</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>firewall</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>NAT</primary></indexterm>
<para>Firewalls and NAT (<quote>IP masquerading</quote>)
gateways</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm>
<primary>electronic mail</primary>
<see>email</see>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>email</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>Electronic Mail servers</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>USENET</primary></indexterm>
<para>USENET News or Bulletin Board Systems</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>And more...</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>With &os;, you can easily start out small with an
inexpensive 386 class PC and upgrade all the way up to a
quad-processor Xeon with RAID storage as your enterprise
grows.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><emphasis>Education:</emphasis> Are you a student of
computer science or a related engineering field? There
is no better way of learning about operating systems,
computer architecture and networking than the hands on,
under the hood experience that &os; can provide. A number
of freely available CAD, mathematical and graphic design
packages also make it highly useful to those whose primary
interest in a computer is to get
<emphasis>other</emphasis> work done!</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><emphasis>Research:</emphasis> With source code for
the entire system available, &os; is an excellent platform
for research in operating systems as well as other
branches of computer science. &os;'s freely available
nature also makes it possible for remote groups to
collaborate on ideas or shared development without having
to worry about special licensing agreements or limitations
on what may be discussed in open forums.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>router</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>DNS Server</primary></indexterm>
<para><emphasis>Networking:</emphasis> Need a new router?
A name server (DNS)? A firewall to keep people out of your
internal network? &os; can easily turn that unused 386 or
486 PC sitting in the corner into an advanced router with
sophisticated packet-filtering capabilities.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm>
<primary>X Window System</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>X Window System</primary>
<secondary>Accelerated-X</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para><emphasis>X Window workstation:</emphasis> &os; is a
fine choice for an inexpensive X terminal solution,
using the freely available X11 server.
Unlike an X terminal, &os; allows many applications to
be run locally if desired, thus relieving the burden on a
central server. &os; can even boot
<quote>diskless</quote>, making individual workstations
even cheaper and easier to administer.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>GNU Compiler
Collection</primary></indexterm>
<para><emphasis>Software Development:</emphasis> The basic
&os; system comes with a full complement of development
tools including the renowned GNU C/C++ compiler and
debugger.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>&os; is available in both source and binary form on
CD-ROM, DVD, and via anonymous FTP. Please see <xref
linkend="mirrors"/> for more information about obtaining
&os;.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="introduction-nutshell-users">
<title>Who Uses &os;?</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>users</primary>
<secondary>large sites running &os;</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para>&os; is used as a platform for devices and products from
many of the world's largest IT companies, including:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Apple</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.apple.com/">Apple</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Cisco</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.cisco.com/">Cisco</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.juniper.net/">Juniper</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>NetApp</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.netapp.com/">NetApp</ulink></para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>&os; is also used to power some of the biggest sites on
the Internet, including:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Yahoo!</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo!</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Yandex</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.yandex.ru/">Yandex</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Apache</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Rambler</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.rambler.ru/">Rambler</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Sina</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink url="http://www.sina.com/">Sina</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Pair Networks</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.pair.com/">Pair Networks</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Sony Japan</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.sony.co.jp/">Sony Japan</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Netcraft</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.netcraft.com/">Netcraft</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>NetEase</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.163.com/">NetEase</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Weathernews</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink
url="http://www.weathernews.com/">Weathernews</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>TELEHOUSE America</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink url="http://www.telehouse.com/">TELEHOUSE
America</ulink></para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>Experts Exchange</primary></indexterm>
<para><ulink url="http://www.experts-exchange.com/">Experts
Exchange</ulink></para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>and many more.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="history">
<title>About the &os; Project</title>
<para>The following section provides some background information
on the project, including a brief history, project goals, and
the development model of the project.</para>
<sect2 id="intro-history">
<title>A Brief History of &os;</title>
<indexterm><primary>386BSD Patchkit</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>Hubbard, Jordan</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>Williams, Nate</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>Grimes, Rod</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>FreeBSD Project</primary>
<secondary>history</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para>The &os; Project had its genesis in the early part
of 1993, partially as an outgrowth of the Unofficial
386BSDPatchkit by the patchkit's last 3
coordinators: Nate Williams, Rod Grimes and Jordan
Hubbard.</para>
<indexterm><primary>386BSD</primary></indexterm>
<para>The original goal was to produce an intermediate snapshot
of 386BSD in order to fix a number of problems with it that
the patchkit mechanism just was not capable of solving. The
early working title for the project was
386BSD 0.5 or 386BSD Interim in
reference of that fact.</para>
<indexterm><primary>Jolitz, Bill</primary></indexterm>
<para>386BSD was Bill Jolitz's operating system, which had been
up to that point suffering rather severely from almost a
year's worth of neglect. As the patchkit swelled ever more
uncomfortably with each passing day, they decided to assist
Bill by providing this interim <quote>cleanup</quote>
snapshot. Those plans came to a rude halt when Bill Jolitz
suddenly decided to withdraw his sanction from the project
without any clear indication of what would be done
instead.</para>
<indexterm><primary>Greenman, David</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>Walnut Creek CDROM</primary></indexterm>
<para>The trio thought that the goal remained
worthwhile, even without Bill's support, and so they adopted the
name "&os;" coined by David Greenman. The
initial objectives were set after consulting with the system's
current users and, once it became clear that the project was
on the road to perhaps even becoming a reality, Jordan contacted
Walnut Creek CDROM with an eye toward improving &os;'s
distribution channels for those many unfortunates without easy
access to the Internet. Walnut Creek CDROM not only supported
the idea of distributing &os; on CD but also went so far as to
provide the project with a machine to work on and a fast
Internet connection. Without Walnut Creek CDROM's almost
unprecedented degree of faith in what was, at the time, a
completely unknown project, it is quite unlikely that &os;
would have gotten as far, as fast, as it has today.</para>
<indexterm><primary>4.3BSD-Lite</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>Net/2</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>U.C. Berkeley</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>386BSD</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>Free Software
Foundation</primary></indexterm>
<para>The first CD-ROM (and general net-wide) distribution was
&os; 1.0, released in December of 1993. This was based
on the 4.3BSD-Lite (<quote>Net/2</quote>) tape from U.C.
Berkeley, with many components also provided by 386BSD and the
Free Software Foundation. It was a fairly reasonable success
for a first offering, and they followed it with the highly
successful &os; 1.1 release in May of 1994.</para>
<indexterm><primary>Novell</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>U.C. Berkeley</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>Net/2</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>AT&T</primary></indexterm>
<para>Around this time, some rather unexpected storm clouds
formed on the horizon as Novell and U.C. Berkeley settled
their long-running lawsuit over the legal status of the
Berkeley Net/2 tape. A condition of that settlement was U.C.
Berkeley's concession that large parts of Net/2 were
<quote>encumbered</quote> code and the property of Novell, who
had in turn acquired it from AT&T some time previously.
What Berkeley got in return was Novell's
<quote>blessing</quote> that the 4.4BSD-Lite release, when
it was finally released, would be declared unencumbered and
all existing Net/2 users would be strongly encouraged to
switch. This included &os;, and the project was given until
the end of July 1994 to stop shipping its own Net/2 based
product. Under the terms of that agreement, the project was
allowed one last release before the deadline, that release
being &os; 1.1.5.1.</para>
<para>&os; then set about the arduous task of literally
re-inventing itself from a completely new and rather
incomplete set of 4.4BSD-Lite bits. The <quote>Lite</quote>
releases were light in part because Berkeley's CSRG had
removed large chunks of code required for actually
constructing a bootable running system (due to various legal
requirements) and the fact that the Intel port of 4.4 was
highly incomplete. It took the project until November of 1994
to make this transition, at which point it released
&os; 2.0 to the net and on CD-ROM (in late December).
Despite being still more than a little rough around the edges,
the release was a significant success and was followed by the
more robust and easier to install &os; 2.0.5 release in
June of 1995.</para>
<para>Since that time, &os; has made a series of releases each
time improving the stability, speed, and feature set of the
previous version.</para>
<para>For now, long-term development projects continue to take
place in the 10.X-CURRENT (trunk) branch, and snapshot
releases of 10.X are continually made available from <ulink
url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/">the
snapshot server</ulink> as work progresses.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="goals">
<sect2info>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Jordan</firstname>
<surname>Hubbard</surname>
<contrib>Contributed by </contrib>
</author>
</authorgroup>
</sect2info>
<title>&os; Project Goals</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>FreeBSD Project</primary>
<secondary>goals</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para>The goals of the &os; Project are to provide software
that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached.
Many of us have a significant investment in the code (and
project) and would certainly not mind a little financial
compensation now and then, but we are definitely not prepared
to insist on it. We believe that our first and foremost
<quote>mission</quote> is to provide code to any and all
comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets the
widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit.
This is, I believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free
Software and one that we enthusiastically support.</para>
<indexterm>
<primary>GNU General Public License (GPL)</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>BSD Copyright</primary></indexterm>
<para>That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU
General Public License (GPL) or Library General Public License
(LGPL) comes with slightly more strings attached, though at
least on the side of enforced access rather than the usual
opposite. Due to the additional complexities that can evolve
in the commercial use of GPL software we do, however, prefer
software submitted under the more relaxed BSD copyright when
it is a reasonable option to do so.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="development">
<sect2info>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Satoshi</firstname>
<surname>Asami</surname>
<contrib>Contributed by </contrib>
</author>
</authorgroup>
</sect2info>
<title>The &os; Development Model</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>FreeBSD Project</primary>
<secondary>development model</secondary>
</indexterm>
<para>The development of &os; is a very open and flexible
process, being literally built from the contributions
of hundreds of people around the world, as can be seen from
our <ulink
url="&url.articles.contributors;/article.html">list of
contributors</ulink>. &os;'s development infrastructure
allow these hundreds of developers to collaborate over the
Internet. We are constantly on the lookout for new developers
and ideas, and those interested in becoming more closely
involved with the project need simply contact us at the
&a.hackers;. The &a.announce; is also available to those
wishing to make other &os; users aware of major areas of
work.</para>
<para>Useful things to know about the &os; Project and its
development process, whether working independently or in close
cooperation:</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>The SVN repositories<anchor
id="development-cvs-repository"/></term>
<listitem>
<indexterm>
<primary>CVS</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>CVS Repository</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>Concurrent Versions System</primary>
<see>CVS</see>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>Subversion</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>Subversion Repository</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>SVN</primary>
<see>Subversion</see>
</indexterm>
<para>For several years, the central source tree for &os;
was maintained by
<ulink url="http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/">CVS</ulink>
(Concurrent Versions System), a freely available source
code control tool that comes bundled with &os;. In June
2008, the Project switched to using <ulink
url="http://subversion.tigris.org">SVN</ulink>
(Subversion). The switch was deemed necessary, as the
technical limitations imposed by
<application>CVS</application> were becoming obvious
due to the rapid expansion of the source tree and the
amount of history already stored. The Documentation
Project and Ports Collection repositories also moved
from <application>CVS</application> to
<application>SVN</application> in May 2012 and July
2012, respectively. Please
refer to the <link linkend="synching">Synchronizing
your source tree</link> section for more information on
obtaining the &os; <literal>src/</literal> repository
and <link linkend="ports-using">Using the Ports
Collection</link> for details on obtaining the &os;
Ports Collection.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>The committers list<anchor
id="development-committers"/></term>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>committers</primary></indexterm>
<para>The <firstterm>committers</firstterm>
are the people who have <emphasis>write</emphasis>
access to the Subversion tree, and are authorized to
make modifications to the &os; source (the term
<quote>committer</quote> comes from the source control
<command>commit</command> command, which is used to
bring new changes into the repository). The best way of
making submissions for review by the committers list is
to use the &man.send-pr.1; command. If something
appears to be jammed in the system, then you may also
reach them by sending mail to the &a.committers;.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>The FreeBSD core team<anchor
id="development-core"/></term>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>core team</primary></indexterm>
<para>The <firstterm>&os; core team</firstterm>
would be equivalent to the board of directors if the
&os; Project were a company. The primary task of
the core team is to make sure the project, as a whole,
is in good shape and is heading in the right directions.
Inviting dedicated and responsible developers to join
our group of committers is one of the functions of the
core team, as is the recruitment of new core team
members as others move on. The current core team was
elected from a pool of committer candidates in July
2012. Elections are held every 2 years.</para>
<para>Some core team members also have specific areas of
responsibility, meaning that they are committed to
ensuring that some large portion of the system works as
advertised. For a complete list of &os; developers
and their areas of responsibility, please see the <ulink
url="&url.articles.contributors;/article.html">Contributors
List</ulink></para>
<note>
<para>Most members of the core team are volunteers when
it comes to &os; development and do not benefit from
the project financially, so <quote>commitment</quote>
should also not be misconstrued as meaning
<quote>guaranteed support.</quote> The <quote>board
of directors</quote> analogy above is not very
accurate, and it may be more suitable to say that
these are the people who gave up their lives in favor
of &os; against their better judgement!</para>
</note>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>Outside contributors</term>
<listitem>
<indexterm><primary>contributors</primary></indexterm>
<para>Last, but definitely not least, the largest group of
developers are the users themselves who provide feedback
and bug fixes to us on an almost constant basis. The
primary way of keeping in touch with &os;'s more
non-centralized development is to subscribe to the
&a.hackers; where such things are discussed. See <xref
linkend="eresources"/> for more information about the
various &os; mailing lists.</para>
<para><citetitle><ulink
url="&url.articles.contributors;/article.html">The
&os; Contributors List</ulink></citetitle> is a long
and growing one, so why not join it by contributing
something back to &os; today?</para>
<para>Providing code is not the only way of contributing
to the project; for a more complete list of things that
need doing, please refer to the <ulink
url="&url.base;/index.html">&os; Project web
site</ulink>.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
<para>In summary, our development model is organized as a loose
set of concentric circles. The centralized model is designed
for the convenience of the <emphasis>users</emphasis> of &os;,
who are provided with an easy way of tracking one central code
base, not to keep potential contributors out! Our desire is to
present a stable operating system with a large set of coherent
<link linkend="ports">application programs</link> that the
users can easily install and use — this model works very
well in accomplishing that.</para>
<para>All we ask of those who would join us as &os; developers
is some of the same dedication its current people have to its
continued success!</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="relnotes">
<title>Third Party Programs</title>
<para>In addition to the base distributions, &os; offers a
ported software collection with thousands of commonly
sought-after programs. At the time of this writing, there
were over &os.numports; ports! The list of ports ranges from
http servers, to games, languages, editors, and almost
everything in between. The entire Ports Collection requires
approximately &ports.size;. To compile a port, you simply change
to the directory of the program you wish to install, type
<command>make install</command>, and let the system do the
rest. The full original distribution for each port you build
is retrieved dynamically
so you need only enough disk space to build the ports you
want. Almost every port is also provided as a pre-compiled
<quote>package</quote>, which can be installed with a simple
command (<command>pkg_add</command>) by those who do not wish
to compile their own ports from source. More information on
packages and ports can be found in <xref
linkend="ports"/>.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Additional Documentation</title>
<para>All recent &os; versions provide an option in the
installer (either &man.sysinstall.8; or &man.bsdinstall.8;) to
install additional documentation under <filename
class="directory">/usr/local/share/doc/freebsd</filename>
during the initial system setup. Documentation may also be
installed at any later time using packages as described in
<xref linkend="doc-ports-install-package"/>. You may view the
locally installed manuals with any HTML capable browser using
the following URLs:</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>The FreeBSD Handbook</term>
<listitem>
<para><ulink
url="file://localhost/usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/handbook/index.html"><filename>/usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/handbook/index.html</filename></ulink></para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>The FreeBSD FAQ</term>
<listitem>
<para><ulink
url="file://localhost/usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/faq/index.html"><filename>/usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/faq/index.html</filename></ulink></para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
<para>You can also view the master (and most frequently updated)
copies at <ulink
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/"></ulink>.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
</chapter>