FreeBSD The Power to Serve

FreeBSD Foundation

Links:
FreeBSD Foundation URL: https://freebsdfoundation.org/
Technology Roadmap URL: https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/technology-roadmap/
Donate URL: https://freebsdfoundation.org/donate/
Foundation Partnership Program URL: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/freebsd-foundation-partnership-program/
FreeBSD Journal URL: https://freebsdfoundation.org/journal/
Foundation Events URL: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/events/

Contact: Deb Goodkin <deb@FreeBSDFoundation.org>

The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to advancing FreeBSD through technical and non-technical support. Funded entirely by donations, the Foundation supports software development, infrastructure, security, and collaboration efforts; organizes events and developer summits; provides educational resources; and represents the FreeBSD Project in legal matters. The following report covers just some of the ways we supported FreeBSD in Q1

Deb Goodkin here. Is it Q2 already? Last quarter was a whirlwind of activity supporting the FreeBSD Project and community. In our report, we will highlight the work we are currently doing to ensure that FreeBSD stays viable and secure for the long term.

As you know, the Foundation is here to support the project in many ways, including software development, security, legal, conferences, and infrastructure. I want to keep this section short, because we have reports throughout this status report to get more details on the work we are doing.

Here is a snapshot of what we worked on last quarter, by the numbers:

  • 2024 funding raised (final amount is determined by February or March): $1,524,259

  • Q1 2025 fundraising: $211,000

  • Active software development projects: 20+

  • Number of commits: 456

  • Amount of technical content published: 8

  • Conferences sponsored/attended: 2

  • Foundation employees: 7

  • Foundation contractors: 19

  • Foundation’s 25th Anniversary: We are thrilled to celebrate 25 years of supporting the FreeBSD Project and community!

Exciting News: Mark Phillips joined the Foundation as our Technical Marketing Manager. Get prepared for some information and helpful technical content coming your way! We also brought on another part-time developer who stepped into our Solutions Specialist role. We will announce that person soon.

Advocacy

In the first quarter of 2025, the Foundation continued its work to support and promote FreeBSD. In addition to our regular activities such as publishing educational and informational content, attending events, and providing travel grants to help FreeBSD contributors participate in conferences we also welcomed a new team member. Mark Phillips joined us in March as our Technical Marketing Manager. With a background in engineering and a passion for storytelling, Mark describes himself as "an engineer by training, a marketer by chance." He has already made connections within the FreeBSD community, and we are excited to see his impact grow. To learn more about Mark, visit our team page.

Other highlights of our Q1 2025 advocacy efforts include:

OS Improvements

The FreeBSD Foundation continued to support two major projects this quarter.

The Foundation’s Laptop Support and Usability project began in Q4 of 2024 and is funded by the FreeBSD Foundation and Quantum Leap Research. It has a budget of $750,000, which will be used over one to two years. The goal is to deliver its public roadmap to improve key features like WiFi, audio usability, suspend and resume functions, graphics, and Bluetooth. The team will also create clear documentation and step-by-step guides to help people use the new features. Work done this quarter includes improvements to the pkg package manager and pkgbase installation, suspend/resume, USB debugging, newer WiFi standards and drivers, updated graphics drivers, performance/efficiency using heterogeneous cores, support for virtual and non-standard audio devices, and integrating donated code to support UVC webcam drivers. Refer to these dedicated report entries for details:

The other major project, commissioned by the Sovereign Tech Agency is to modernize FreeBSD’s infrastructure. To learn more about the project and the updates from this quarter, refer to the Infrastructure Modernization report entry.

Updates are available for three other projects in separate report entries:

Overall, there were 346 src, 96 ports, and 14 doc tree commits identifying the FreeBSD Foundation as a sponsor. A sampling of that work includes:

  • Enhancements to SMBIOS handling, including favoring version 3 (64-bit) entry points, adding diagnostics, and improving code robustness

  • Ongoing work to optimize memory usage during early VM initialization

  • Continued development toward supporting heterogeneous CPU cores

  • Enabling USB driver support for the Allwinner D1 SoC

  • Improvements to makefs(8) for generating reproducible cd9660 images

The Foundation is managing FreeBSD’s participation in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program. At the end of February, we were excited to learn that FreeBSD was once again selected as a mentoring organization for GSoC 2025. That marks our 21st consecutive year in the program. We received 64 applications, and we will learn which projects will be awarded slots on May 8.

Continuous Integration and Workflow Improvement

As part of our continued support of the FreeBSD Project, the Foundation supports a full-time staff member dedicated to improving the Project’s continuous integration system and test infrastructure.

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 https://freebsdfoundation.org to find more about how we support FreeBSD and how we can help you!

Last modified on: May 22, 2025 by Graham Perrin