The Trouble with FreeBSD

Benno Rice discusses the community and process challenges facing FreeBSD, analyzing how it struggles to attract and retain contributors.

Benno Rice linux.conf.au/schedule/presentation/104/ An open source project’s community is what makes it a living thing. Without its community the project is a static lump of code. FreeBSD is one of the largest and longest continuously running open source projects around. Not only that, it comes from an even longer lineage before it via the original BSD work at the University of California, Berkeley. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is without its problems. While FreeBSD isn’t in any danger of disappearing any time soon, it does have issues with attracting new contributors, keeping its existing contributors and keeping its community healthy. These issues are not always unique to FreeBSD but FreeBSD provides an interesting case study. This presentation will cover: * How FreeBSD’s community and its processes have evolved over the years and how this compares to other, often newer, projects. * What FreeBSD could learn from other projects. * How this all fits into broader issues around open source development communities and things that do and don’t work.