Results of NetBSD's 2007 Fundraising Campaign

[Hubert Feyrer <hubertf%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

** Results of NetBSD's 2007 Fundraising Campaign

NetBSD is an open source operating system project that depends on
funding for its operation. A generous donation by Google has enabled
us to fund development in the area of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP),
and a fundraising drive was started to extend this activity. The goal
of $50,000US of the 2007 fundraising campaign was met thanks to a lot of
support from companies, users, and our community as a whole.

NetBSD is an open source project project run by volunteers, and
offers an operating system that scales well from embedded devices
via commodity PCs and appliances to modern server hardware. In order
to maintain project infrastructure and complete high profile tasks,
NetBSD has always depended on contributions from its corporate and
individual benefactors.

NetBSD had support for SMP since the NetBSD 2.0 release in 2004.
Currently, this support is changed to use fine grained kernel
locking. This will allow better overall CPU time utilization in
multiprocessor / multicore machines, which are becoming increasingly
popular. The work was made possible by a generous donation from
Google. Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager Open Source from Google,
Inc. says:

 ``NetBSD is one of the earliest open source projects around, and
   working with NetBSD during several iterations of our Google Summer of
   Code program has been a great pleasure.''

Chris DiBona, Manager of the Open Source Programs office also from
Google, Inc. adds:

 ``At Google, we use a fair amount of open source and we look for
   opportunities to help important projects like NetBSD whenever we
   can, so when we had the chance to fund this development work, we
   jumped at the chance to do so. It is our hope that our example
   will encourage other companies to further their support of Open
   Source projects like NetBSD.''

After initial funding of the SMP project has been arranged, NetBSD
decided to raise funds to extend the ongoing projects, and fund
additional new work.  The goal of our 2007 fundraising drive was to
raise $50,000US, which we are happy to say was met! Numerous small and
medium size donations from all over the world have reached us, and we
owe great gratitude to our donors.

Why do companies donate to the NetBSD Project? Stephen Borrill from
Precedence Technologies in the United Kingdom tells
us:

 ``We use NetBSD as the basis for ThinIT, our embedded thin-client OS,
   and NetManager, our Internet security server. NetBSD delivers the
   flexibility and reliability we require combined with a clean,
   easily extensible codebase. ThinIT needs bulletproof
   consumer-facing reliability and the ability to run on virtually any
   hardware as well as a small memory and storage
   footprint. NetManager requires security, throughput and scalability
   coupled with the latest Internet application development
   tools. NetBSD ticks all the boxes even though these requirements
   are at different ends of the spectrum.''

On a similar note, Jukka Marin from Embedtronics in Finland explains:

 ``Embedtronics are specialized in embedded hardware and software
   design.  We work with security, data communication, industrial and
   medical applications using 8- to 32-bit microcontrollers and
   multi-tasking software. We have been using NetBSD since version
   0.9c in 1994 on multiple architectures for practically everything
   from common office work to software development and embedded
   systems.  We value the code quality, multi-platform support and
   portability, and completely free BSD licensing.''

Metrum Institute uses run their modeling and simulation grid. Jeff
Hane explains:

 ``The clean and modular NetBSD design gives us unrestricted control
   of the OS and package versions, enabling us to adapt to our
   changing operational needs.''

US-based Coyote Point Systems recently selected NetBSD as the base
operating system for its next generation of load balancing and
acceleration appliances.  According to Bill Kish, Coyote Point's Alpha
Coyote,

  ``Our engineering team studied commercial and Open Source options,
   and we chose NetBSD because of strong support from the NetBSD
   developers and NetBSD's commitment to cross platform support.''
   Kish adds, ``A flexible and highly scalable SMP architecture was
   foremost in our minds when we reviewed our options.  NetBSD will
   give us the tools we need to scale our product to 10Gb/s.''

Major new features of NetBSD 4.0 include support for Xen version 3,
Bluetooth, many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on
ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs. New network services include iSCSI target
(server) code and an implementation of the Common Address Redundancy
Protocol (CARP). System security has been further enhanced with
restrictions of mprotect(2) to enforce W^X policies, the kauth Kernel
Authorization framework, and improvements to the Veriexec file
integrity subsystem, which can be used to harden the system against
trojan horses and virus attacks.

Work that was done after the NetBSD 4.0 release was to make the kernel
use modern synchronization mechanisms and apply fine-grained locking
to support SMP. Furthermore, a framework for running file system code
in userland -- the Runnable Userspace Meta Program (rump) -- and a
general framework for power management were added, the latter includes
suspend to RAM on x86 with ACPI-capable machines. Also, general
support as well as SMP for many new embedded PowerPC, MIPS and modern
ARM platforms was added.

With the great results of NetBSD's 2007 fundraising campaign, we have
several options for future work in NetBSD. Besides the usual costs for
hardware, hosting and legal fees, we intend to continue and increase
funded development. Areas where such work can be expected after our
NetBSD 4.0 release include SMP, hardware RAID drivers and power
management.


 * About NetBSD

NetBSD is a free, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source
operating system available for many platforms, from large-scale server
systems to powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded
devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent in
both production and research environments, and the source code is
freely available under a business-friendly license. NetBSD is
developed and supported by a large and vivid international
community. Many applications are easily available through pkgsrc, the
NetBSD Packages Collection.

Information about NetBSD can be found at www.NetBSD.org.
Information about Google can be found at www.Google.com.
Information about Precedence Technologies can be found at www.precedence.co.uk.
Information about Embedtronics can be found at www.embedtronics.fi. 
Information about Metrum Institute can be found at www.metruminstitute.org.
Information about Coyote Point Systems can be found at www.coyotepoint.com.

NetBSD and pkgsrc are registered trademarks of The NetBSD Foundation.
Google is a trademark of Google Inc.
All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.


 * Contact

Hubert Feyrer
hubertf%NetBSD.org@localhost
The NetBSD Foundation