Deb Goodkin
2008-Dec-10 08:57 UTC
[FreeBSD-Announce] Foundation End-of-Year Fund Raising Drive Update
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