2008 Fund Raising Campaign

2008 Fund Raising Campaign

We're kicking off our End-of-Year Fund Raising Drive! Our goal this year is to raise over $300,000. We also added a goal of 1000 donors for 2008. Without going into a lot of detail here, we are concerned about meeting our public support test for next year. We are very grateful for the large contributions we received from the companies listed on our donors page. But, we still need lots of smaller donation to help keep us a public charity! What's a small donation? Anywhere from $1 to $10,000. OK, we don't consider $10,000 small, but it's around the max amount that counts towards helping us pass this public support test.

Why do we need donations?

The goal of the FreeBSD Project is to provide software that may be used for any purpose -- and without strings attached. Our mission is to support the FreeBSD Project and community. Our funding comes from people like you – those who are determined to keep FreeBSD free!

How have we spent the money this year?

  • Sponsored FreeBSD related conferences like BSDCan, EuroBSDCon, AsiaBSDCon, meetBSD, and NYCBSDCon. We also sponsored FreeBSD developer summits in Ottawa and Cambridge.
  • Provided 22 travel grants and funding to individuals to attend these conferences this year.
  • Provided legal support for the project on issues like understanding the GPLv3 impact on FreeBSD, providing a privacy policy, trademark ownership and permission, and other legal issues that come up.
  • Provided grants for projects that improve FreeBSD, like Java binaries, Network Stack Virtualization, and Improving Hardware Performance Counter Support.
  • Provided equipment for developers working to improve FreeBSD and projects like the NetPerf cluster. Facilitated donation of NetApp filer, 32-core hardware, and 10 Gigabit equipment for project continuity planning and the NetPerf Cluster.

Your financial support is critical for the FreeBSD Project. Please help us keep FreeBSD free. Click here to donate (any amount will help). And thank you for your continued support of the FreeBSD Foundation.