[FreeBSD-Announce] Foundation End-of-Year Fund Raising Drive Update

[Deb Goodkin]

Dear FreeBSD Community,

First, we would like to thank everyone who has donated to the FreeBSD
Foundation this year. We have raised $198,583 towards our 2008 goal of
$300,000! We are almost 2/3 of the way to reaching our goal!

Like most non-profits, we are seeing the affects of the weak economy.
This time last year we had raised $346,587. By meeting our goal this
year will allow us to continue the same amount of support next year, as
well as continue to invest some of the funds.

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 23 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, Improving Hardware
Performance Counter Support, making improvements to the TCP stack,
making FreeBSD tolerate the removal of active disk devices, and a couple 
of other projects that we will be announcing soon.

•    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.

How can you help?

Your financial support is critical for the FreeBSD Project. Please help
us keep FreeBSD free. Go to

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/

to donate (any amount will help).  And thank you for your continued
support of the FreeBSD Foundation.


Thank You,

The FreeBSD Foundation