
As Imad Sousou mentioned in his blog, Intel will be more actively engaging with the FreeBSD Foundation and the FreeBSD Project to deliver more timely support for Intel products and technologies in FreeBSD. While Intel has been contributing to the BSD code base for some time, for example with the Intel® Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library (Intel® ISA-L) and iflib drivers for Intel® network interface controllers (NICs), thus far the efforts of Intel and the community have been fragmented. The focus has been on individual devices or technologies rather than taking a more holistic systems approach.

The 2017 January/February issue of the FreeBSD Journal is now available! The latest issue features articles on: The FreeBSD Translation Tools, FlightAware and FreeBSD, FreeBSD Powered LCD Advertising Display, plus much more!

FOSDEM 2017 was held on the first weekend of February. After last year’s success of having a one day FreeBSD devsummit during the first conference day, we decided that this year, we’d do an extra day (Friday) right before FOSDEM.

The FreeBSD Foundation is looking forward to exhibiting this weekend at the 15th Annual Southern California Linux Expo ( SCALE 15x). The expo starts on Friday, March 3rd at 2pm in Pasadena, CA and continues until Sunday. Find out more about the conference here, and if you’re attending, be sure to stop by the booth to say hello!

The Foundation awarded Kurt Lidl a grant to port blacklistd to FreeBSD and integrate it into a set of base system and ports daemons. This project is now complete and blacklistd is available in FreeBSD. The FreeBSD-CURRENT development branch has the most up-to-date version.

The 2017 FreeBSD Storage Summit is almost here. Join us in Santa Clara, CA on February 27, 2017, for a single day event will be filled with presentations about new developments in FreeBSD’s storage stack and the latest storage trends.

From sponsoring events to attending conferences, the Foundation is continuing its mission of advocacy in early 2017. In the next few weeks, members of the Foundation team will be representing the Project and the Foundation at events around the world.

Welcome to the first 2017 edition of the Faces of FreeBSD series. We’re again sharing a story from someone involved in FreeBSD. It may be a story from someone who’s received funding from us to work on development projects, run conferences, travel to conferences, or advocate for FreeBSD. Or, it may be from someone who gives back to FreeBSD financially or in another way. Regardless, it is always from someone who is making a positive difference in the FreeBSD world.

Happy new year and welcome to 2017! In this update, I’ll take the opportunity to look at how the FreeBSD Foundation identifies, reviews, and chooses projects to be undertaken by paid development staff and by recipients of project development grants.