The FreeBSD Project is run by FreeBSD committers, or developers who have direct commit access to the master Git repository. [1] The FreeBSD Core Team exists to provide direction and is responsible for setting goals for the FreeBSD Project and to provide mediation in the event of disputes, and also takes the final decision in case of disagreement between individuals and teams involved in the project. [2] The Core Team is also responsible for selecting individuals for other teams related to the development and ongoing maintenance of FreeBSD, such as the Security Officer, the Release Engineering team, and the Port Manager team. [1] Finally, the Core Team also vote on nominations for new committers. In the event of a breach of internal rules of conduct, it falls to the core team to decide on sanctions. [2] The FreeBSD Core Team would be the equivalent of a board of directors, if the FreeBSD Project were a company.
The FreeBSD Core Team is the equivalent of a similar body in the NetBSD Project called the Core Group. [3]
The FreeBSD Core Team began as an unofficial group of programmers, mainly consisting of those that initiated the FreeBSD Project itself. [2] There were eleven members, and new members could only join through invitation.
As the FreeBSD project grew, so did the Core Team. By the year 2000, there were over 200 active committers, and the Core Team had expanded to 18 people. Some Core members were completely inactive, others far less active than many non-members, and there were even accusations of cronyism. The old, informal structure was no longer considered viable, and in early 2000 discussions were had regarding the future of the organisation. [2] A set of bylaws were formulated by Jonathan Lemon, Warner Losh and Wes Peters. [2] In a general vote by active committers on August 28, 2000, these bylaws passed by 117 votes to 5 against.
The FreeBSD Core Team is now an elected body comprising nine members from the pool of project developers with rights to directly change the Project repositories (committers). Committers are entitled to vote in Core elections if they have made at least one change to one of the Project's repositories in the past 12 months.
The first election took place in September 2000. [4] Seventeen candidates stood for election, including eight of the existing Core Team. Five were re-elected, alongside four new members. [4] Elections have taken place every two years since, the most recent election results being announced in May 2022. Elections shall be held two years after the last vote, even if the previous election was early. [5] Elections may be held early if the membership of the Core Team fall below seven, [5] or if petitioned for by 1/3 of active developers. [5] The bylaws may be changed by a 2/3 majority of committers if at least 50% of active committers participate in the vote. [5]
The Core Team appoints a secretary at its own discretion. This non-voting position exists to provide a central point of contact between external parties and the group, for keeping track of the agenda, and for acting as the interface between Core and other internal groups such as the Account Creation team. The Core Team Secretary is also responsible for writing and distributing monthly status reports to the FreeBSD developer community. The current Core Team Secretary is Sergio Carlavilla Delgado. [6]
The election lasts for five weeks. During the first week, committers who wish to run for election announce their intention to do so. In the four weeks that follow the application period, active committers vote for up to nine candidates. [1]
After the voting period closes, votes are counted. Ties are resolved by unambiguously elected candidates; for instance, if there is a tie for ninth place, the first eight decide which of the tied candidates will join the team. [1] The results are announced within one week of the end of the voting period, and the newly elected team enters office one week after the announcement. [1]
Debian, also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software and optionally non-free firmware or software developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of Debian (0.01) was released on September 15, 1993, and its first stable version (1.1) was released on June 17, 1996. The Debian Stable branch is the most popular edition for personal computers and servers. Debian is also the basis for many other distributions that have different purposes, like Proxmox for servers, Ubuntu or Linux Mint for desktops, Kali for penetration testing, and Pardus and Astra for government use.
XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the XFree86 License version 1.1. It was developed by the XFree86 Project, Inc. The lead developer was David Dawes. The last released version was 4.8.0, released December 2008. The last XFree86 CVS commit was made on May 18, 2009; the project was confirmed dormant in December 2011.
Gentoo Linux is a Linux distribution built using the Portage package management system. Unlike a binary software distribution, the source code is compiled locally according to the user's preferences and is often optimized for the specific type of computer. Precompiled binaries are available for some packages. Gentoo runs on a wide variety of processors, including x86, PowerPC, SPARC, DEC Alpha, ARM, MIPS and PA-RISC.
Apache Subversion is a software versioning and revision control system distributed as open source under the Apache License. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS).
The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project's implementation of the C standard library. It is a wrapper around the system calls of the Linux kernel for application use. Despite its name, it now also directly supports C++. It was started in the 1980s by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU operating system.
Theo de Raadt is a South African-born software engineer who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the founder and leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects and was also a founding member of NetBSD. In 2004, De Raadt won the Free Software Award for his work on OpenBSD and OpenSSH.
Matthew Dillon is an American software engineer known for Amiga software, contributions to FreeBSD and for starting and leading the DragonFly BSD project since 2003.
WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles beginning from the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, Nintendo consoles beginning from the 3DS Internet Browser, and the discontinued BlackBerry Browser. WebKit's C++ application programming interface (API) provides a set of classes to display Web content in windows, and implements browser features such as following links when clicked by the user, managing a back-forward list, and managing a history of pages recently visited.
Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes in any set of computer files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers who are collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.
TrueOS is a discontinued Unix-like, server-oriented operating system built upon the most recent releases of FreeBSD-CURRENT.
The FreeBSD Ports collection is a package management system for the FreeBSD operating system. As of February 2020, there are over 38,487 ports available in the collection. It has also been adopted by NetBSD as the basis of its pkgsrc system.
FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD and the current version runs on x86, ARM, PowerPC and RISC-V processors. The project is supported and promoted by the FreeBSD Foundation.
A committer is an individual who is permitted to modify the source code of a software project, that will be used in the project's official releases. To contribute source code to most large software projects, one must make modifications and then "commit" those changes to a central version control system, such as Git.
OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. The OpenBSD project emphasizes portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security, and integrated cryptography.
NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is available for many platforms, including servers, desktops, handheld devices, and embedded systems.
OpenMediaVault (OMV) is a free Linux distribution designed for network-attached storage (NAS). The project's lead developer is Volker Theile, who instituted it in 2009. OMV is based on the Debian operating system, and is licensed through the GNU General Public License v3.
Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the Chromium project with contributions from Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Opera Software, Vivaldi Technologies, Adobe, Intel, IBM, Samsung, Huawei and others. It was first announced in April 2013.
LibreSSL is an open-source implementation of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. The implementation is named after Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the deprecated predecessor of TLS, for which support was removed in release 2.3.0. The OpenBSD project forked LibreSSL from OpenSSL 1.0.1g in April 2014 as a response to the Heartbleed security vulnerability, with the goals of modernizing the codebase, improving security, and applying development best practices.
Colin A. Percival is a Canadian computer scientist and computer security researcher. He completed his undergraduate education at Simon Fraser University and a doctorate at the University of Oxford. While at university he joined the FreeBSD project, and achieved some notoriety for discovering a security weakness in Intel's hyper-threading technology. Besides his work in delta compression and the introduction of memory-hard functions, he is also known for developing the Tarsnap online backup service, which became his full-time job.
