What is the FreeBSD Foundation?

The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3), US based, non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and promoting the FreeBSD Project and community worldwide. Funding comes from individual and corporate donations and is used to fund and manage projects, fund conferences and developer summits, and provide travel grants to FreeBSD developers.

The Foundation purchases hardware to improve and maintain FreeBSD infrastructure, and funds staffing to improve test coverage, continuous integration and automation.

The Foundation advocates for FreeBSD by promoting FreeBSD at technical conferences and events around the world. The Foundation also provides workshops, educational material, and presentations to recruit more users and contributors to FreeBSD.

The Foundation also represents the FreeBSD Project in executing contracts, license agreements, and other legal arrangements that require a recognized legal entity.

What can I expect from the FreeBSD Foundation?

The FreeBSD Foundation supports both the development and popularization of FreeBSD, the world’s best open source operating system. We do this in a number of ways including:

Operating System Improvements: Providing staff to immediately respond to urgent problems and implement new features and functionality allowing for the innovation and stability you’ve come to rely on.

Security: Providing engineering resources to bolster the capacity and responsiveness of the Security team providing you with peace of mind when security issues arise.

Quality Assurance: Improving and increasing test coverage, continuous integration, and automated testing with a full-time software engineer to ensure you receive the highest quality, secure, and reliable operating system.

New User Experience: Improving the process and documentation for getting new people involved with FreeBSD, and supporting those people as they become integrated into the FreeBSD Community.

Training: Supporting more FreeBSD training for undergraduates, graduates, and postgraduates. Growing the community means reaching people and catching their interest in systems software as early as possible. More training provides job seekers an additional set of in-demand skills and employers a bigger pool of skilled candidates.

Face-to-Face Opportunities: Facilitating collaboration among members of the community, and building connections throughout the industry to support a healthy and growing ecosystem and make it easier for you to find resources when questions emerge.