Re: FreeBSD Student Opportunities

On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 11:49 PM Jake Freeland <jake@technologyfriends.net>
wrote:

> I am currently a freshman majoring in computer science at the University
> of Minnesota. I've been actively maintaining at-home FreeBSD and other
> UNIX-like servers for years now, and I have recently started researching
> and tinkering with operating system development. Although I am certainly a
> beginner, I have already fallen in love with low-level programming and I am
> eager to experience what it's like to work on a large-scale team.
>
> On all the UNIX-like systems that I have worked with, I always find myself
> leaving the Linux world and coming back to BSD. I run FreeBSD on my desktop
> and I can attest to the cleanliness of the operating system itself and the
> user-friendliness that comes with the documentation.
>
> Over the last month I've contemplated writing this email, but I figured it
> would not hurt to ask. Are there any potential internship opportunities
> available among the developers of the FreeBSD team?
>
> I would love to provide a resume and talk to a team member about my
> experience. I hope we can sort something out here. I am extremely excited
> to take my passion to the next level.
>
> Thank you for your time,
> Jake Freeland
>


I am not affiliated to the FreeBSD Project . Therefore , I can not say
anything about
it .

One fruitful contribution and learning opportunity may be to study the bug
reports
related to your interests . Develop patches to correct such a bug and test
it in sufficient
detail . For these activities , please review related FreeBSD
documentations ( Handbook , etc. ) .


You may fork the FreeBSD sources in Github and apply your patches and obtain
testable release .iso files , and generate "Pull requests" .

If you are able to fix bugs , this shows that you understood the related
parts
very well .



I can say surely that your efforts will not be wasted .


If you want to continue to work on more difficult subjects you may do any
one of
the following ( including your own choices ) :

- Eliminate as many as  "panic" calls by developing tests for possible
panics :
   Use these tests before entering into possible panic causing sources ,
and turn back
   from them safely without generating a crash .

- In sources , device information is encoded into routines . Instead of
such a "FIXED"
  approach , generate , for example , .xml files to define possible devices
with names
  generated from the names of devics .

 On detecting the  presence or requirements of a device , search its
related definition in
 "root" or "user" spaces ( order may be important ) and if such a
definition is found ,
  load its driver and let it run it .

- Other possible tasks : you may find these in the FreeBSD related mails ,
wiki pages , or
  other suggestions . Over time , you may enrich your agenda , and , also
you
  may generate very useful projects for your own University courses , up to
PhD
  degree .


With my best success wishes ,

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk