Episode 239: Deb Goodkin of FreeBSD  ## Metadata - Author: [[Sustain]] - Full Title: Episode 239: Deb Goodkin of FreeBSD - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/24f90cae-0b88-4122-8729-3917c22375a8 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **BSD License Enables Free Usage** - The BSD license is permissive, allowing free use and modification without mandatory code return. - This makes tracking FreeBSD users difficult, but it's estimated in the hundreds of thousands given device usage. Transcript: Speaker 1 I have no idea. Cause one reason is because of the license. So using the BSD license makes it, that's a permissive license. And so anyone is free to use it and make changes and they're required to give anything back. And so even though we could probably track downloads, we have so many different mirrors around the world that there's no way for us to really track what the downloads are. But I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of users out there. And we just know that because of certain devices that is on. ([Time 0:03:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c56ce38e-7cec-4235-88dd-4feee2bcd4ca)) - **Foundation Supports Project Role** - The FreeBSD Project is volunteer-driven, producing the OS and fostering community. - The FreeBSD Foundation supports it as a nonprofit by funding development, legal representation, and infrastructure maintenance. Transcript: Speaker 1 Comprised of the FreeBSD operating system and the community. So the community are the people who support it and are the contributors. And so we have developers and people who advocate and people who use FreeBSD. So all different types of people help contribute to FreeBSD the project. That's volunteer -based and what they produce is the computer operating system. The Previously Foundation is a separate organization. We are a US -based 501c3, which means it's a tax classification, meaning we're a nonprofit for the public good. So we're not a membership organization. We're not association. We're what I refer to as a true nonprofit. And so our whole purpose is support the project and the community. And we do that in many ways from funding development projects that help improve FreeBSD. And that might be external developers, as well as we have our own team of software developers. I mean, we are small. FreeBSD, and we have people who help with quality control and continuous integration and security and things like that. We actually could represent the project as a legal entity. So we can engage in NDAs and different types of agreements. ([Time 0:04:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fe4dd079-6ebe-46c2-9354-75a87c51d40e)) - **Foundation Prioritizes Software Dev** - FreeBSD Foundation invests over half its budget directly in software development to maintain and secure the OS. - Unlike trade associations, their mission centers on community support and ensuring FreeBSD remains secure and innovative. Transcript: Speaker 1 I would say we're closer to Nome, but I believe that we're bigger. Most of our budget, I'd say over half of our budget, it goes directly to software development. So we do a lot of software development work and that's probably mostly what we do. And the reason why is because it's not always easy to get volunteers to step in to do work, especially things that maybe aren't to them. We're say there's a vulnerability out there and we have people on staff who can step in right away and debug, put fixes in quickly. And so having that funding really allows us to do that and really help make sure the projects stay secure. Us to Linux Foundation, they're a trade association and they have, I don't know, a thousand projects under them. We are not at trade association. We do work with companies and we do foreign partnerships with them and help support them. But the purpose is to further the adoption and development of FreeBSD. And so by having users use free BSD, it helps by them contributing. ([Time 0:06:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aad377e5-4c7f-4516-b888-b0d2aacfbe6c)) - **FreeBSD Leads Security Research** - Security has become a top focus in open source, with FreeBSD heavily involved in advanced memory safety research. - FreeBSD-based projects participate in global security initiatives driven by governments and academia. Transcript: Speaker 1 And we've been focusing on security as one of the highest priorities for us as well as for the project. And it's because of what—I mean, one reason is because of what we're hearing throughout the world. So so many governments are now coming out with mandates and requirements and guidelines. And even the White House came out with their guidelines for software developers and suggesting they use certain programming languages that help mitigate memory safety issues. And one thing that they pointed out in that requirement list or the guideline list was there's some security work going on in the UK right now that we're heavily involved with. And it's mostly between ARM and the University of Cambridge. And where they're doing the memory safety mitigation in the hardware, it's an ARM processor. And so the operating system that they're using is called TURI -BSD. And TURI -BSD is based on free BSD. And so that is something that the UK government and actually the US government has put a lot of money into that research. And so it's in the experimental stages now, but a lot of companies are actually basically trying it out right now. But you're also hearing from outside of the US, like in Europe, they had the CRA and now you have different groups that are forming, that are mostly global made up of people from different Open source communities and projects. And they're getting together to talk about like, so how do we implement this? So what are our guidelines that we can all follow? So we're sharing that same information instead of every project independently trying to figure out how do we follow or abide by the CRA? So you're seeing a lot of projects actually working together, which is really cool to see. I mean, just like open source, it's, you know, using shared code to help save money and development time and all that kind of stuff. It's the same thing here with protecting our digital infrastructure. And I mean, since the world is so digital, it's a simple word to it. And there are bad actors out there. That is why we're hearing so much about it now. And so we have two people on staff who are part of the security team. And so we have the deputy security officer works for us. And so we stay on top of issues that are coming out. We also have one person who has been focusing on looking at policies and making sure that we're part of these conversations that are going on. I mean, FreeBSD, a lot of people don't know about it because you hear about Linux all the time, but FreeBSD is critical software. There are a lot of companies using it and there are a lot of governments that are using it. ([Time 0:09:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7f928083-ec92-4d61-a033-9233cfbc35b9)) - **Prioritizing Policy With Limited Staff** - With limited resources, the Foundation prioritizes work based on input from companies, users, and industry trends. - They comply with evolving standards like SSDF and participate selectively in policy working groups. Transcript: Speaker 1 That's, it's really hard, especially when you don't have that many resources. So we have eight full -time employees on staff right now. And then we have a few contractors who we consider full -time employees, but they're not US citizens. And then we also then contract out part -time software developers. So for such a large project, we are very small. And so before the CRA came out and a lot of these discussions, I mean, we were really focused on software development and our own infrastructure and making sure systems were protected. And one thing about people in FreeBSD is they're very aware of security to maybe a little annoying, but I think it's good, especially in this day and age. So in looking at like policies or making sure we're involved, the person that we have that's focusing on it isn't focusing on it full time. But there are people outside the PhruBSD Foundation who are. And so they're participating in these conversations full -time, and then we're participating when the working groups meet. So that way, not everyone is in the conversations and spending a lot of time on this. Like you're saying, most projects don't have someone assigned to this. We also get a lot of input from corporate users and so what do they need? And so, like, there's a attestation that we now provide to certain companies. It's called the SSDF. And it's something that the US government has required software companies to be able to attest to that they're compliant to the rules that are stated there. This is out of NIST. So we've actually come up with our first draft of that. And so there's companies that do deal directly with the government that are required or will soon be required to have that. We also hear from companies, not only like what they need as far as what the government's requiring, but just what they need in general. And so we take all this information and so we hear from what companies we want. What they want, we hear from individual users who are in our community. ([Time 0:13:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9b7990f3-a74c-4685-958b-83e7916b456b)) - **Engage Broadly With Community** - Engage with FreeBSD community via forums, mailing lists, IRC, Discord, and in-person events. - Tag key contacts like Deb Goodkin in communications to get timely responses and build connections. Transcript: Speaker 2 Are these a few very passionate people who are always responding? Or is it every single person all the time? And if so, how do you filter that down? What does the community look like for you? Is there a forum? Speaker 1 Oh, there's forums. People communicate in many different ways. So we have forums, we have mailing lists, we have IRC, a lot of people are on IRC. I discord, I'm on discord. And so if I'm not looking at it all the time, but people know to tag me they want me to see something or to answer a question. And so, and we also have in -person events. They're typically really small, but really that allows people to meet in person who've only talked over IRC or however way they've communicated in the past and actually sit down next To each other and discuss things that they're working on, which is always fun to see. And because people always leave those like just so energized and exciting about working on something that they discussed with someone else. ([Time 0:15:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6dcf4a1e-f2c1-436e-9926-13800d5f57f6)) - **Participate In Community Surveys** - Participate in FreeBSD's annual community survey to provide feedback and influence project priorities. - Watch for informal surveys throughout the year to keep contributing ideas and needs. Transcript: Speaker 1 We just published the responses to that. And so we had almost 1500 respondents to that survey. And it was around, I think 93% said that they had a positive experience with FreeBSD. And we had, I think 53 questions. We worked with people from the core team on the questions. So the is very project -focused, but we also had a few foundation questions in there too, because it helps us hear like, what do you want to see us spending your money on? And so that actually helps inform what we're going to do. ([Time 0:17:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ea1388ed-0b96-4c63-a2e5-e0775a1d7df2)) - **New User Onboarding Challenges** - Getting new users started with FreeBSD is challenging and a priority to reduce friction. - Presence outside North America is limited; increasing international engagement is important for growth. Transcript: Speaker 2 Is it diversity? Is it money? Is it something else? Speaker 1 Actually, it was only 1%. They had a negative experience. So the rest was just neutral. That's important too, to understand that. So there was some feedback on how folks got information. And I think getting started, that's one thing that we're working on improving is just like reducing the friction on using FreeBSD for a new person, as well as just the whole onboarding Process. And just like what's a path I can follow for getting started with FreeBSD that isn't too challenging that would make me want to stop right at the beginning. Also one thing we heard was like outside like you hear FreeBSD and there's a lot of support within the US or North America and in and outside of that. We're not as prevalent as far as I mean, it's being used, but we're not at like events in those areas. So there's not as much presence. ([Time 0:18:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8706fb11-219f-425d-9d7c-7256a604fbc9)) - **Increase Diversity Through Outreach** - Actively attend women-in-computing events and partner with organizations that promote female engineers. - Promote welcoming culture and highlight FreeBSD's opportunities in systems programming to attract diverse contributors. Transcript: Speaker 1 Okay, yeah, I would say culturally, we're pretty diverse. Typically, when you think of diversity, you think of like gender diversity, and especially in tech, it is an issue. It's been an issue for a long time. So I wouldn't say always, because who are the original like computer programmers? It was women. And then that changed in like 1984. But we are trying to attract more women into the project. And we were doing work in this area before COVID and making some progress and then things stalled like with everything else during COVID. And the biggest reason was that we weren't getting out there to like events. So we're restarting that. And so one way that we're doing that is going to like women and computing type of events. And talking about open source and why you should get involved just in general and the skills that you'll gain to help you get a job. And then I always try to highlight like, if you're going to contribute to open source why you should contribute to free BSD. We attempt to sell free BSD on it is a welcoming and inclusive community. Is a perfect? No, I don't know of any that are. I mean, just like any type of team or company around the world. But I do find compared to a lot of open source projects out there that it does. And then we are working on improving that. Involved with if you're interested in systems programming. And so we promote that too. And so we just met with a company that is really good at attracting female engineers and restart a program of introducing women to open source and previousity. And so we're talking about introducing us at one of their local universities. I also, here in Colorado, I'm based in Boulder, Colorado, and so I have like five universities around me. And so right before COVID, I was giving talks at some of the universities. And it wasn't like folks on gender, but I was working with the women in computing group here at University of Colorado, Boulder, but it did stall. I mean, it was really unfortunate because I think for this program, we really need to go in person. And the other thing too, I found is that it's really important to have female engineers either give the workshops or be there participating and being at these events. And we have a few female developers spread around the world and it's hard to make it work. We did that with Grace Hopper. We participate in Grace Hopper, I think three years in a row. And so right now we're focusing on the smaller ACM celebration women and computing events because what I found is that they're typically tended by about 300 college students and professors. And it really gives you a chance to have deep conversations with them instead of going to Grace Hopper, which has like 18,000 women in computing, which is pretty awesome in itself. It's harder to connect and have more lengthy conversations about FreeBSD and why you should contribute and get involved with it. So I have hopes, because I mean, my background is engineering. And at the time, there weren't that many women. Most of my classmates were guys. And so for me, it's, I want more women involved, not just for EBSD, but really in STEM. And I want more girls to know that there are a lot of careers in this area. ([Time 0:20:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f2417be4-b190-4cc4-84dc-bf58c689d36e)) - **Personal Passion For FreeBSD** - Deb loves FreeBSD for its passionate, smart community and the challenge of supporting such a deep technical project. - She wants FreeBSD to thrive for decades, honoring its historic roots from Berkeley. Transcript: Speaker 1 I've learned to really love the people and what it stands for. I've been with the Foundation for a long time. It's the longest company I've ever worked for. And it's not because I can't find their job. It's like, it's been challenging and interesting this whole time. I was hired basically as an engineer to oversee this nonprofit. So my background was not operating systems. So that was an area I had to learn and I'm still learning about it. So I find that interesting. But over time, I've, especially at the beginning, I just started meeting people from the project. When we're at an event, I looked around, I would usually give a talk at the beginning. I just look around the world, the room, and everyone in there is so dang smart. You probably have different levels of smartness, but it's just like the minds in there just blew me away. And the fact that they're doing it because they know, it's like they know how good FreeBSD is. A lot of them are like in the internals of this kernel. That's part of the big operating system. And they understand it and they understand the architecture and they know why it's really good. But you also have people who aren't developers. And they are creating videos about FreeBSD and educating people on why is FreeBSD such a great operating system? And so the community is just really passionate. And is it any different than any other project? I haven't really been involved in any other projects, but from what I see, I see a lot of possibilities. And so do the people on my team. And they're also passionate about FreeBSD. And so I want to support them. I want the project to be successful. I want it to be relevant in 31 more years, or another 31 years. I want to see the people who started this back from Berkeley. ([Time 0:27:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/98e0b2cb-bd4a-492f-a4ee-f372f5dd81a3)) - **FreeBSD Day Celebrates Users** - FreeBSD Day is celebrated week-long with live events, interviews, and showcases of corporate and individual use cases. - The Foundation shares stories and educational content to raise awareness and engagement. Transcript: Speaker 1 Yeah, we have so much fun on this and actually we're celebrating it all week. So what we've been doing is promoting use cases. We've been writing a lot of content about previous day to help raise awareness of previous day and why it's so great. And so in the past few months, we've written a lot of use cases on previous day. So these are mostly commercial use cases from like Netflix to NetApp and all these different companies out there that are using free So we're sharing these use cases, we're sharing Individual stories or interviews. We're doing, tomorrow we're gonna do live streaming all day on YouTube, talking to various users out there, both individuals as well as corporate users, and also telling stories. Well, actually, people in the community are sharing their stories and how they got started with FreeBSD as well as why they're involved with it now. And so it's just a week of highlighting FreeBSD. And so since this is the birthday will be in the past when this comes out, we'll have all of this on our website. We go back into our shells. I mean, we're continuing promoting for USD or continuing talking to other companies out there. Why are they using FreeBSD and how did this solve their problems? And so, we want people to go to our website, freebsdfoundation .org, and read about the use cases. Go to our YouTube channel and you can look at YouTube, FreeBSD, and you can see interviews there. ([Time 0:29:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0935b3f8-38de-4ca5-bd33-7c1acb75552d)) - **Start Contributing Via Documentation** - Visit freebsdfoundation.org and freebsd.org to learn, download, and contribute to FreeBSD. - Start contributing by improving documentation to understand the system and join the respected technical writing community. Transcript: Speaker 1 So to learn more about FreeBSD, so you can go to our site and we are updating our web pages to make it easier to find information as well as publishing more of like these use and what is free BSD and explaining that more. But free BSD org is the projects website. And so if you want to learn more about free BSD go there. If you want to find out about how to download free BSD. So you can try it out. You go there. There is a button on that website. I think it's like new to free BSD or something like that. And so if you want to contribute or find out different ways you can contribute or use FreeBSD you can click on that and that helps you navigate like different things that you could do. If someone wants to contribute to FreeBSD then I always suggest contributing documentation because even if you're a developer writing documentation has a great way to learn how the Code works. So I always think that that's a great way to start. And we're known for our great documentation, technical writers, the people who work on documentation are highly respected. So it's a great to get involved with. And in fact, I'm going to start contributing. That is on my 2D list. That's how I want to contribute back. Because also, I need to get my hands dirty again. And I've installed previous DEE many times. I've helped with workshops. But I need to start doing it again and get the user's perspective. Because that helps me understand like what are the challenges or the friction points and things like that. So that's what I would advise is going to previousd .org. ([Time 0:31:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ffc893a8-efcf-463f-95a9-579ba000d3d9)) - **Beastie Daemon Mascot Explained** - The BSD mascot 'Beastie' is a daemon referencing Unix background processes, not a demon. - Each BSD project has its unique logo distinct from the shared daemon mascot. Transcript: Speaker 1 Okay. So the Damon, whose name is Beastie, is actually the BSD mascot. So it's not the free BSD logo, even though it's on the website. A play on Unix's background processes called... Speaker 2 As soon as you said Damon, I'm like, oh, okay, that makes sense now. Okay, now I get it. Speaker 1 And actually, if I'd known you were going to ask me this question, I would have looked up the guy who created it is like the guy who runs Disney now. It was like one other designer. So this was 30 years ago and John Lasseter I think is his name. So he's a high up executive at Disney but he created the original Damon. People love Damon. People sometimes get confused with the demon if that's what they imagine a demon looks like. But the logo for FreeBSD is actually we could I call it a bobblehead. It's like around red circle with little ears. They're not really ears. So each BSD project has its own logo. So Open BSD is a pufferfish, Net BSD is a flag, and Dragonfly is a dragonfly. ([Time 0:33:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d9fde6d6-fb6d-4b46-8ae1-848aa84a3509))