Re: GSoC Student Introduction

On Wed, May 14, 2025 at 11:09 AM Kayla P <witchikittikat@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> My name is Kayla (Kat) Powell. I am one of the GSoC Students selected for
> this summer and wanted to introduce myself and my project.
>
> I am going into my senior year at San Francisco State University studying
> computer science (big surprise!). Some of my hobbies include drawing,
> music, and video games. But, in particular, I have a passion for operating
> systems that started back in my freshman year when I ditched Windows for a
> weekend-long Gentoo Linux install---an experience that sparked my interest
> in system internals and OS hacking. Since then, I’ve developed a true
> appreciation for not only the simplicity and engineering of UNIX systems,
> but also its collaborative nature that offers a rich fountain of growth and
> knowledge, uniting people from all walks of life.
>
> This interest led me to FreeBSD. It is at the heart of BSD UNIX and has a
> great permissive license. Its many use cases with an approachable
> contributor base has intertwined it into my life in many ways, such as my
> NAS, website backend, and learning source. If you were at the recent
> FreeBSD summit in November, you probably saw my boyfriend and me sitting in
> the back absorbing all the amazing information. Now, in this whirlwind of
> events, I have been gratefully accepted as a GSoC Student under imp@,
> where I’ve taken several of his “crazy” ideas and tied them into one
> project: ACPI Initialization in Loader with Lua Bindings.
>
> Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is Intel’s power
> management specification. It revolutionized power management by bringing it
> into the operating system, rather than the BIOS. As it stands right now, it
> is in the FreeBSD kernel, which is great, and most of it can stay there.
> But, we specifically need to bring ACPI’s initialization routines into the
> loader, so we can (1) relieve the bootloader of having to guess ACPI
> information and (2) integrate it into the Lua interpreter. The outcome of
> this project will be the enumeration of the ACPI namespace into Lua
> bindings so we can ultimately script ACPI. The goal is to not only address
> the former inefficiencies, but to provide easier power management to all
> FreeBSD users, whether it be for embedded systems, servers, or desktop
> users.
>
> I am really excited to contribute to this project with imp@. I have high
> respect for him (and for the FreeBSD space in general), and I am extremely
> grateful to be here. If anyone has any knowledge/input on my project space,
> please don’t hesitate to reach out. I look forward to meeting everyone!
>
> Kind regards,
> Kat Powell
> Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpowkitty> | Github
> <https://www.github.com/kpowkitty>
>

Welcome aboard, Kat!  I do recall seeing two young people in the back of
the room at that conference.  Now I know who they were.