freebsd announce - Dec 2011 - FreeBSD Foundation End-of-Year Fundraising Campaign!

Dear FreeBSD Community,

The FreeBSD Foundation has been proudly supporting the FreeBSD Project 
and community for 11 years now. Every year we sponsor BSD conferences 
and events around the globe, help developers with their travel expenses 
to attend these conferences, work to protect the intellectual property 
of the FreeBSD project, visit institutions and corporations to promote 
the use of FreeBSD, purchase equipment to grow the FreeBSD 
infrastructure, and fund research and development projects that enhance 
the FreeBSD OS.

We are deeply grateful for all the support we receive from so many 
individuals and organizations who value FreeBSD. We currently are at the 
half way point towards our goal of raising $400,000 this year. We are 
hoping that you, the FreeBSD community, will help us meet our goal by 
making a donation this month. By donating to the foundation, you are 
donating to the FreeBSD Project and community as a whole.

I have had the privilege of meeting many FreeBSD enthusiasts in person, 
through email, and on the phone. I am always impressed with the passion 
that these people have for FreeBSD. Most volunteer their precious time 
after work and some are more fortunate where they actually get paid by 
their companies to work with FreeBSD. When there is a BSD related 
conference we usually get quite a few travel grant applications 
requesting help with developers' travel expenses. Thanks to your 
support, we have been able to sponsor the travel expenses of developers 
from Mexico, Lithuania, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Denmark, and many 
other countries.

Some of these developers recently wrote personal stories about how 
receiving help with their travel expenses to attend conferences helped 
them with their FreeBSD work. These stories will be published in our 
upcoming newsletter. One developer from Japan, whose attendance we've 
sponsored more than once, is a technical writer. He told me that the 
Japanese development community is comprised of earnest and skillful 
people. They are sharp programmers who know many programming languages, 
but learning and understanding English is difficult for many of them. He 
attends the conferences so he can keep up with the latest FreeBSD 
information and provide this information to the Japanese FreeBSD 
community in their native spoken language.

Another recent travel grant recipient runs a FreeBSD mirror server in 
Sweden, a country that apparently does not have many BSD users. He had a 
chance to meet many FreeBSD developers for the first time by attending 
EuroBSDCon. He has recently started submitting patches to our FreeBSD 
documentation set, and will hopefully become a committer, literally 
doubling the number of committers in Sweden!

Lastly, a Canadian developer that we've sponsored told us, "By
attending
these conferences I have gained valuable experience, connected with 
fascinating people that use FreeBSD, learned from presenters and most 
importantly, forged some friendships that will last a lifetime."

These grant recipients have given far more back to the FreeBSD community 
than what they have received from the foundation. And, this is only one 
area where your donations provide a significant, tangible, measurable 
benefit for the entire FreeBSD community.

If you benefit from FreeBSD, please donate. With your donation, we can 
continue to support FreeBSD activities like:

- development projects to support emerging technologies such as IPv6 
support in FreeBSD, GEM, KMS, and DRI support for Intel drivers, Five 
New TCP Congestion Control Algorithms, and much more.
- BSD conferences around the globe, including Europe, Japan, Canada, US, 
and Ukraine.
- giving students and contributors the opportunity to attend conferences 
and developer summits.
- maintaining the infrastructure of computers and equipment that support 
our community.
- growing the FreeBSD community through marketing and outreach to users 
and businesses.
- protecting the FreeBSD trademarks and providing the project with 
access to legal counsel.
- helping FreeBSD continue to serve as the foundation for research and 
enterprise.

Please consider making a donation so we can continue -- and increase our 
support of the FreeBSD Project and community! Making a donation is easy 
and quick. Please visit The FreeBSD Foundation website to find out how 
you can make a difference for FreeBSD today.


Thank you for your support!

Sincerely,

Deb Goodkin
Secretary/Treasurer
The FreeBSD Foundation