September 7, 2024 at 12:02PM
The FreeBSD Foundation secured a €686,400 investment from Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund, focused on security feature enhancements and improvements extending into 2025. Supported by the German Federal Ministry, STF actively funds open source projects vital to global digital infrastructure, with recent investments concentrated on security upgrades and technical debt reduction.
Key Takeaways from the Meeting Notes:
– The FreeBSD Foundation received a significant investment of €686,400 from Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund, with support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and hosted by the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation.
– The funding is allocated to cover work for the remainder of 2024 and extend into 2025, focusing on security features and improvements for the FreeBSD operating system.
– Security initiatives to be addressed include zero trust builds, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) automation, reducing technical debt, enhancing security controls, and improving tools related to the software bill of materials.
– The focus on security improvements is part of a broader trend of the Sovereign Tech Fund actively supporting open source projects and contributing to the global digital infrastructure, with recent investments in projects such as GNOME and GStreamer.
– The aim is to accelerate the modernization of FreeBSD, enhance security hygiene, and improve developer experiences, as highlighted by Fiona Krakenbürger, co-founder of the Sovereign Tech Fund.