[FUGSPBR] [Fwd: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD Foundation Quarterly Newsletter, December 21, 2004]

Giovanni P. Tirloni gpt em tirloni.org
Ter Dez 21 11:55:46 BRST 2004



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] 	FreeBSD Foundation Quarterly Newsletter, 
December 21, 2004
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 12:04:42 +0000 (GMT)
From: Robert Watson <rwatson em FreeBSD.org>
To: freebsd-announce em FreeBSD.org

                The FreeBSD Foundation Quarterly Newsletter
                            December 21, 2004

In this Edition:
  o Letter from the Secretary/Treasurer
  o An update on the FreeBSD Foundation's 501(c)3 Status
  o A Roundup of Recent Foundation Activities
    - Event Sponsorship
    - PAE/BusDMA/PCIe Hardware grant
    - The FreeBSD Performance Cluster
    - FreeBSD Foundation Web Site
  o The FreeBSD Foundation acquires the FreeBSD Trademark
  o An Update on the Netperf Project
  o The State of Java Runtime Licensing
  o New Proposal Submission Process
  o Future Projects
  o Foundation Financial Data

Letter From the Secretary/Treasurer
===================================

   FreeBSD Community,

   For almost five years now, the FreeBSD Foundation has been working
   quietly to support the FreeBSD project.  Many of you may be aware
   of the FreeBSD Foundation, but not know much about our activities.
   This quarterly newsletter, along with a revamped web site debuting
   on January 1st, marks a renewed effort to educate the FreeBSD
   community about our efforts.

   This first newsletter includes important information about the
   FreeBSD Foundation's current status as a public-charity and the
   steps you can take to help us keep that status.  Even if you don't
   have time to read the whole newsletter, please take the time to
   read and understand this section.

   The remainder of the newsletter is devoted to answering the
   question we get most often, "What does the FreeBSD Foundation
   do?"  From financial data to status updates on recent and planned
   projects, we hope you'll find the answer to all of your questions
   in the newsletter.  If you don't find what you're looking here or
   on our web site, please don't hesitate to contact us via email.

   Thanks for your support!

   Justin T. Gibbs
   Secretary/Treasurer
   gibbs em FreeBSDFoundation.org

   FreeBSD Foundation Board of Directors
   bod em FreeBSDFoundation.org

The FreeBSD Foundation's 501(c)3 Status
=======================================

   December 31st of this year will mark the end of the FreeBSD
   Foundation's probationary period as a 501(c)3.  The IRS requires
   all non-profit public charities to prove, at the five year mark,
   that they have met the "public support test" or be classified as
   a private foundation.  For several reasons that are too technical
   to go into, it is in the Foundation's interest to remain a public
   charity.

   The easiest way for the Foundation to demonstrate "public support"
   is to pass the "1/3rd test":

                 Limited Donations      1
                ==================  =  ===
                  All Donations         3

   For the purposes of this test, no single donor may contribute
   more than 2% of the total donation pool to the numerator.

   Through good fortune and the extreme charity of a handful of
   donors, the FreeBSD Foundation finds itself at risk of failing
   the "1/3rd test".  As of today, the ratio of limited donations
   to total donations stands at 27.9%.  While we have every confidence
   that our support history will substantiate that the FreeBSD
   Foundation is a public charity, going through the appeals process
   can be a lengthy and expensive ordeal.

   For this reason we are directly appealing to the community to
   help us meet the "1/3rd test".  To do so, the Foundation will
   need to raise $30,400 in donations not affected by the 2%
   contribution limit.  Given the Foundation's expected donation
   balance, the 2% limit for any single person or entity is $8000
   given during the Foundation's 5 year probationary period.

   If you use FreeBSD and would like the FreeBSD Foundation to
   continue its support of FreeBSD, please consider making a donation.
   No amount is too small to make a difference.

   The FreeBSD Foundation accepts donations via check:

        The FreeBSD Foundation
        7321 Brockway Dr.
        Boulder, CO 80303

   or PayPal:

        http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donating.shtml

   Checks must be postmarked by December 31st. to count toward the
   advanced ruling period.

   Thanks again for your support!

Recent Foundation Activities
============================

  o Event Sponsorship

    The FreeBSD Foundation has taken an active role in sponsoring
    BSD-related and FreeBSD-related events, including the highly
    successful AsiaBSDCon conference held in Taipei during March of
    2004, and FreeBSD developer summits co-scheduled with major
    conferences such as the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC)
    in Boston, MA during June 2004, and the EuroBSDCon conference
    in Karlsruhe, Germany during November 2004.  In addition, the
    FreeBSD Foundation has provided limited travel grants to a number
    of FreeBSD developers to attend conferences and workshops on
    behalf of the FreeBSD Project, including assisting in travel
    costs to attend the above events.  Both BSD-centered conferences
    and FreeBSD-specific developer events play critical roles in
    expanding the FreeBSD user community and supporting collaborative
    development.

    The FreeBSD Foundation would like, in particular, to recognize
    the contributions of Michael Wu and the AsiaBSDCon organizers,
    Scott Long, the EuroBSDCon program committee, the USENIX ATC BSD
    sig program committee, the USENIX board, and the BSDCan organizers
    for their outstanding contributions in organizing these and other
    important events.  The FreeBSD Foundation is committed to
    supporting similar future events.

  o PAE/BusDMA/PCIe Hardware grant

    Typical system configurations continue to gain more memory -- it
    is not uncommon to see 2GB or more in a desktop.  Recently Scott
    Long has taken on the task of polishing up the system components
    that handle these large memory configurations.  To aid in his
    development and testing of the PAE, BusDMA, and new PCI-Express
    extended configuration space framework, the Foundation has
    purchased 4x2GB DIMMS of DDR3200 ECC memory and a case to house
    a donated, large memory capable, system.  The fruits of Scott's
    efforts are already being seen in the FreeBSD CVS tree.  Thanks
    Scott!

  o The FreeBSD Performance Cluster

    Originally created in support of the Netperf project, our
    performance cluster continues to grow.  We expect to add 64bit
    systems to the cluster early next year as well as simplify the
    mechanism for having developers "check-out" the cluster for test
    runs.  For more details on the FreeBSD Performance Cluster, see
    the "Network Performance Work Update" section later in the
    newsletter.

  o The FreeBSD Foundation Web site Gets a New Look

    The members of the Board of the FreeBSD Foundation may be many
    things, but certainly not web site designers!  After a year of
    neglecting the current web site, we finally enlisted some help
    in the form of Dag-Erling Smorgrav.  Dag-Erling is putting the
    finishing touches on our revamped site just in time to ring in
    the the new year.  Look for the site to debut on January 1.
    Thanks Dag-Erling for all your hard work!

The FreeBSD Foundation acquires the FreeBSD Trademark
=====================================================

   The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce the acquisition of
   the FreeBSD trademark.

   In October of last year, Wind River Inc. agreed to assign the
   FreeBSD trademark to the FreeBSD Foundation.  As with most things
   involving paperwork and government entities, progress has been
   slow, but transfer is now complete in both the U.S. and Germany.
   Transfer requests for the United Kingdom and Japan are expected
   to complete shortly.

   The Foundation would like to thank Wind River for their assistance
   with the Trademark transfer, and Murray Stokely for his diligence
   and hard work in shepherding the process.

   As originally registered by Walnut Creek CDROM, the FreeBSD
   trademark applies to "CD ROMs featuring an archive of computer
   programs which may be accessed for use archived on a CDROM." With
   the trademark transfer complete in two jurisdictions, the Foundation
   is now turning its attention to updating the trademark to reflect
   its current usage by the FreeBSD project.  The new trademark
   filing should be submitted to all four jurisdictions in January.

Network Performance Work Update
===============================

   The defining architectural drive behind FreeBSD 5.x is "SMPng",
   the adoption of fine-grained synchronization primitives and
   additional threading to improve concurrency and scalability.
   During this massive undertaking, kernel components not yet converted
   to the new architecture are supported, but suffer a significant
   performance penalty.  Removing this penalty from the networking
   stack was a requirement for FreeBSD 5.x to become the new -STABLE
   branch and replace FreeBSD 4.x in Internet server installations.
   Through the sponsorship of the FreeBSD Foundation and the support
   of many volunteer developers, the initial lock down of the FreeBSD
   network stack was completed for the FreeBSD 5.3 release.

   The Foundation's initial contribution to the network stack lock
   down project ("Netperf") was to award a six-month development
   contract to Sam Leffler.  Sam, a FreeBSD developer and one of the
   original developers of the BSD networking stack, completed locking
   of the firewall, Ethernet bridging, DUMMYNET, and socket subsystems.
   He also cleaned up existing synchronization work in the routing
   code and several areas of the TCP and UDP implementations.

   To support the volunteers continuing this work in testing the
   robustness and performance of the networking stack, the FreeBSD
   Foundation created the "FreeBSD Performance Cluster".  Located
   in donated space at Sentex Data Systems' Ontario, Canada colocation
   center, the cluster has proven an invaluable asset for determining
   network stack bottlenecks and performing regression testing.
   Through a matching hardware donation from FreeBSD Systems, Inc.
   the cluster was christened with three 3.06GHz Dual-Xeon machines.
   Recently a Dell 2650, donated by IronPort Systems, was added the
   cluster.  Permitting full remote management, including network
   booting, remote power, and remote console, the cluster provides
   an important experimentation resource available for developers
   throughout the world.

   Even with the great success of the Netperf project, there is still
   much to be done to complete the SMPng initiative.  The FreeBSD
   Foundation plans to continue its work supporting this and other
   architecture and performance initiatives through targeted development
   grants and improvements to the FreeBSD Performance Cluster.  Please
   see the "New Proposal Submission Process" section of this newsletter
   for details on the Foundation's funding process.

Java Update
===========

   In August of 2003, the FreeBSD Foundation released its first
   binary distribution of the Java runtime environment for the FreeBSD
   platform.  Since that time, the Foundation has funded additional
   development to port the Java 1.4.x to FreeBSD, and worked diligently
   to simplify the licensing process for "OEM" distribution of our
   binaries.  Work on the Java 5 port has also recently begun.  While
   we are pleased to report tremendous success in supporting Java
   development initiatives, our negotiations with Sun Microsystems have
   yielded few results.

   The seemingly constant restructuring at Sun has made it difficult
   to find and retain consistent contacts in their licensing program.
   The latest blow to our efforts was the recent notification of
   Sun's desire to revoke and renegotiate the FreeBSD Foundation's
   SCSL license.  From what we can determine, Sun is re-negotiating
   all SCSL licenses to standardize their Java revenue model.

   Even after receiving notice of the termination of our license
   attempts to contact Sun to renegotiate the license have gone
   unanswered.  For now, it is safe to assume that the Foundation
   will engage in another lengthy, and potentially costly, licensing
   negotiation before our binary distributions can continue.

   In the mean time, the FreeBSD Foundation is continuing its support
   for Java development.  With the recent introduction of Java 5.0,
   and FreeBSD 5/6's new KSE thread library, there is still much
   work to do.  This should ensure that FreeBSD continues to enjoy
   excellent Java support while we await resolution of the Java
   licensing issue.

New Proposal Submission Process
===============================

   As the Foundation looks on to 2005, the board of directors has
   started to develop a more formal proposal review process for
   vetting responses to its proposal requests.  The new scheme has
   many of the same features as a paper review committee for a
   technical conference.  The Foundation will solicit reviewers from
   both inside and outside the BSD community with technical expertise
   in fields applicable to proposals.  Each member will review a
   fixed, small, number of proposals and submit comments on those
   proposals for group discussion and ranking.  The committee's
   recommendations will then be used by the board of directors to
   choose the funded proposals.

   Our hope is that by limiting the workload and commitment for
   volunteers we can attract high caliber reviewers.  We also feel
   that bringing input from outside the BSD community will increase
   the visibility of FreeBSD while also broadening the community's
   knowledge of other technologies.

Future Projects
===============

  The FreeBSD Foundation is always looking for new ways to enhance
  and promote the FreeBSD operating system.  Below are a few of our
  new initiatives that are just getting started:

  o Legal Council on the DMCA, copyright auditing, and code licenses
    The SCO lawsuit has heightened the awareness of the Open Source
    community to intellectual property issues.  In early December,
    the FreeBSD Foundation tasked its legal council with exploring
    different ways the FreeBSD Foundation, the FreeBSD Project, and
    its developers can limit liability for IP infringements without
    hobbling the project in paper work.  Working closely with the
    FreeBSD Core team, the Foundation hopes to provide FreeBSD
    developers with accurate and useful information about copyright
    law, the DMCA, and software licensing.

  o Enterprise Storage Initiative
    The first test of the FreeBSD Foundation's new proposal review
    process will concentrate on FreeBSD's storage subsystems.  From
    VFS and file systems to the CAM SCSI framework, this area of the
    FreeBSD kernel is one of the largest still lacking the fine-grained
    locking of the SMPng architecture.  FreeBSD also lacks many
    industry standard storage features including a journaling file
    system, software RAID support for many vendor's meta-data, and
    iSCSI.  While the Foundation lacks the resources to fund all of
    this work, we hope to address some of these issues via development
    grants in 2005.  Look for our request for proposals early in the
    new year.  Monetary donations to the Foundation will help to
    make funding for these projects possible!

FreeBSD Foundation Financial Data
=================================

   Profit/Loss Jul 2004 - Sep 2004

      Ordinary Income/Expense
         Income
           Grants                                     1,485.95
         Total Income                                 1,485.95

         Expense
           Computer Equipment                         8,022.00
           Event Sponsorship
              Conference Fee & Travel Grants      1,668.90
              Event Sponsorship - Other           3,622.47
           Total Event Sponsorship                    5,291.37

           PayPal Fees                                   33.85
           Postage and Delivery                          39.53
           Professional Fees
              Accounting                            450.00
              Legal Fees                             72.30
           Total Professional Fees                      522.30

         Total Expense                               13,909.05

      Net Ordinary Income                           -12,423.10

      Net Income                                    -12,423.10


   Balance Sheet as of Dec 21, 2004

      ASSETS
        Current Assets
           Checking/Savings                         194,605.36

        Total Current Assets                        194,605.36

      TOTAL ASSETS                                  194,605.36

      LIABILITIES & EQUITY
        Equity
           Retained Earnings                        182,803.98
           Net Income                                11,801.38
        Total Equity                                194,605.36

      TOTAL LIABILITIES & EQUITY                    194,605.36


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