Announcements

Accepting Travel Grant Applications for BSDCan 2010!

Calling all FreeBSD developers needing assistance with travel expenses to BSDCan 2010.

The FreeBSD Foundation will be providing a limited number of travel grants to individuals requesting assistance. Please fill out and submit the Travel Grant Request Application at http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/TravelRequestForm.pdf by April 9, 2010 to apply for this grant.

How it works:

This program is open to FreeBSD developers of all sorts (kernel hackers, documentation authors, bugbusters, system administrators, etc). In some cases we are also able to fund non-developers, such as active community members and FreeBSD advocates.

(1) You request funding based on a realistic and economical estimate of travel costs (economy airfare, trainfare, ...), accommodations (conference hotel and sharing a room), and registration or tutorial fees. If there are other sponsors willing to cover costs, such as your employer or the conference, we prefer you talk to them first, as our budget is limited. We are happy to split costs with you or another sponsor, such as just covering airfare or board.

If you are a speaker at the conference, we expect the conference to cover your travel costs, and will most likely not approve your direct request to us.

(2) We review your application and if approved, authorize you to seek reimbursement up to a limit. We consider several factors, including our overall and per-event budgets, and (quite importantly) the benefit to the community by funding your travel.

Most rejected applications are rejected because of an over-all limit on travel budget for the event or year, due to unrealistic or uneconomical costing, or because there is an unclear or unconvincing argument that funding the applicant will directly benefit the FreeBSD Project. Please take these points into consideration when writing your application.

(3) We reimburse costs based on actuals (receipts), and by check or bank transfer. And, we do not cover your costs if you end up having to cancel your trip. We require you to submit a report on your trip, which we may show to current or potential sponsors, and may include in our semi-annual newsletter.

There's some flexibility in the mechanism, so talk to us if something about the model doesn't quite work for you or if you have any questions. The travel grant program is one of the most effective ways we can spend money to help support the FreeBSD Project, as it helps developers get together in the same place at the same time, and helps advertise and advocate FreeBSD in the larger community.

2009 End-of-Year Fund-raising Campaign!

Since the start of our 'Be Counted!' campaign in August of this year, over 350 new and returning donors have contributed to the FreeBSD Foundation. With your help, we are now 50% of the way to meeting our 2009 fund raising goal. Thank you donors, for your support! Now, in these last few weeks of 2009, the FreeBSD Foundation needs the support of those who have yet to donate to take us the rest of the way.

The recession has hit everyone hard. For many, every possible expense has been cut, and what spending they do is out of strict necessity. Unfortunately the challenges facing FreeBSD are undiminished by recessions and the technological landscape continues to change at a rampant pace. That is why the FreeBSD Foundation nearly doubled its 2008 budget for 2009 and needs your support so we can avoid cutting our investments in 2010.

If you benefit from FreeBSD, please donate so:

  • development projects are funded to support emerging technologies such as solid state disks, USB 3.0, machine and network virtualization, highly parallel processors, clustering, and data replication.
  • BSD conferences continue around the globe.
  • students and contributors have the opportunity to attend conferences and developer summits.
  • the infrastructure of computers and equipment supporting our community can be maintained.
  • the FreeBSD community is grown through marketing and outreach to users and businesses.
  • FreeBSD trademarks are protected and the project has access to legal counsel.
  • FreeBSD continues to serve as the foundation for research and enterprise.

Every donation, no matter its size, makes this work possible. As a non-profit with very low overhead, your donation is the best way to invest in FreeBSD. Please make that investment today so we can meet our dual goals for 2009 of 1000 donors and $300,000.

You can make a donation (including recurring subscriptions) by going to: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/.

Be Counted Campaign!

Millions of systems run FreeBSD. Hundreds of volunteers contribute to FreeBSD's success. But what is the size of FreeBSD's user base? This simple question is very hard to answer, but its answer is vital to the cause of promoting FreeBSD. It is extremely difficult to convince businesses to invest time and money to add FreeBSD support to their products based solely on vague estimates of the size of our community. We should know - working to make FreeBSD a more widely supported platform is a task the FreeBSD Foundation has worked on since its inception.

Please help us in our fight to promote FreeBSD. A donation to the FreeBSD Foundation helps fund our work, but it also gives us strength in numbers. Our count of unique donors is a vital indication of the size and buying power of our community. However, we have never broken even one thousand donors in any year. We know in our hearts that this is a small fraction of our user base and of those who want to help expand FreeBSD's presence.

So stand up and be counted! Make a donation. Encourage other FreeBSD users to donate as well. No donation amount is too large or too small. Just by becoming a donor you are making a powerful statement about the strength of FreeBSD!

You can make a donation by going to: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/.