Like many endeavors in this world, running a large open-source project is a serious task that requires both dedication and monetary support; otherwise, the quality of the work will most likely deteriorate as times passes.
Money is needed to build and maintain a reliable infrastructure for the project, hire developers who would otherwise be very cost-prohibitive to recruit, and more.
Of course, the above doesn't apply to a project that has an enthusiastic community of developers who aren't doing it for the money, just out of a passion for it.
FreeBSD is one such project that's a known name in the global FOSS community and a popular operating system among the enterprise crowd. In a recent turn of events, it has received a major financial boost from an organization backed by the German government.
So, let's see what the future holds for FreeBSD. 😃
STF Supports The FreeBSD Foundation
Announced a few days earlier, the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) has decided to invest €686,400 in the FreeBSD Foundation, the entity responsible for the FreeBSD project.
This funding is meant for the remainder of this year, stretching until the end of 2025. It will be used to primarily focus on improving the FreeBSD infrastructure, keeping it up-to-date in terms of security, ensuring regulatory compliance, and, most importantly, providing a top-notch developer experience.
During the announcement, Executive Director of the FreeBSD Foundation, Deb Goodkin added that:
The world’s governments recognize the key role open source projects like FreeBSD play in our shared digital infrastructure.
This STF-commissioned work will provide the necessary visibility, auditability, and trust for commercial FreeBSD users facing new regulations as well as public sector, academic, and individual users.
With this partnership in place, the FreeBSD Foundation will be working on organizing and managing the whole program to achieve five key goals:
- The first is to work on Zero Trust Builds, for enhancing tooling and processes.
- The second is to focus on CI/CD Automation, for streamlining software delivery and operations.
- The third is to Reduce Technical Debt by implementing the appropriate tools and processes.
- The fourth is to have robust Security Controls to modernize and extend the security mechanisms, this also includes the FreeBSD Ports and Packages Collection.
- The fifth one is to have SBOM Improvements by employing new tooling and processes for the FreeBSD SBOM.
If you were not familiar, the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) is an organization backed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), with it additionally being hosted/supported by the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation GmbH (SPRIND)
The STF already supports a long list of notable open-source projects like PHP, GNOME, Systemd, Coreutils, FFmpeg, and more. FreeBSD is just the latest addition to their portfolio.
Wrapping up, I will say that it is really great to see open-source projects like FreeBSD getting the recognition they deserve. Going forward, I look forward to seeing more such projects step into the limelight and grow even further while also staying open-source. (looking at you, CockroachDB).
Suggested Read 📖
Sourav Rudra
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