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Core team election 2008

There are 17 candidates running for 9 places on the core team:

Alfred Perlstein <alfred@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 12 01:55:26 2008

8 years development on FreeBSD.

Focus:
  SMP Peformance.
  Usability for both developers and users.
  Code integration.
  The quintessential benevolent dictator. (thanks jkh).

Areas:
  Kernel (NFS, SMP) and misc kernel bug janitor.
  Userland (threads).

Documentation:
  PXE guide for FreeBSD.

Mentorship:
  Working on integration of the usb4bsd stack.
  Brought in and mentored several developers over the years.
    (nfsv4, new mbuf allocator, new rpc layer)

Advocacy:
  Ran the FreeBSD booth at NYCBSDcon in 2006 as a fundraiser for
    the FreeBSD foundation.
  Worked the Walnut Creek CDrom booth a few times in early 2000.
 
Misc:
  Provided numerous FreeBSD developers/contributors with jobs.
  Donated to FreeBSD foundation, 2006, 2007, 2008.

Track changes.

Brooks Davis <brooks@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 5 23:19:13 2008

I've been using FreeBSD nearly daily for the last decade and was first
exposed to it in 1993.  I've been a src committer since 2001 and a
ports committer since 2004.  Through a combination of luck and lobbying
I've been fortunate enough to maneuver my day job to be nearly entirely
FreeBSD focused.  I've been involved in Google Summer of Code for four
years now.

My current technical interests include mobile computing, high
performance computing (HPC), networking, and finding ways to make
systems more maintainable.  This has translated into network interface
configuration changes, improvements to the diskless booting framework,
and ports of HPC related tools such as Ganglia and Sun Grid Engine.  My
main non-technical, FreeBSD interest is increasing our visibility in
the academic and research environment.  I believe this is an excellent
way to develop new talent for the project and to expose developers
to new ideas.  To that end I am conducting HPC research intended for
publication using FreeBSD and am working to encourage the faculty I know
to use open source software in general and FreeBSD in particular in the
classroom.

I am running for a second term on the core team because I see it as an
opportunity to serve the project in another way.  I believe that being
both a src and ports committer gives me insight into two facets of the
project which is very useful.

Track changes.

Doug Rabson <dfr@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 17 11:02:20 2008

I have been a BSD user since 4.1BSD, a FreeBSD user since 386bsd 0.1
and a FreeBSD committer since just before FreeBSD 2.0. I served as a
core team member from 1999 to 2002, first by invitation and later
standing in the first core election.

I've worked on all kinds of aspects of FreeBSD over the years. Pretty
much all of that work has been in making the system more useful both
to me and to others. If I can find something both useful and
interesting to do then I'm happy. Examples include KLD, newbus, kobj,
NFS, loader, alpha, ia64, AGP, ELF, GSS-API and plenty of other things
that I've forgotten.

As to what I think the next core team should be doing, I think its
doing just fine as it is. In my opinion, the core team should not
be trying to provide technical direction but rather to help the group
as a whole set its own technical goals.

Track changes.

George V. Neville-Neil <gnn@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 11 20:29:31 2008

My history with FreeBSD goes back to version 2.2.7 which I installed
onto a Toshiba laptop, and my history with BSD in general goes back
to my college days when I was first introduced to a version of 4.3
BSD on a Pyramid.  Since then I have contributed various bits of
code, mentored a few new committers, co-authored a book on FreeBSD,
joined the security and release engineering teams, and helped to
get the AsiaBSDCon conferences going again.

I have served for nearly 2 years on core and it has been an interesting
experience.  I can say that when I signed up to run for my first term
I really didn't know what I was getting myself into, but now that I've
done it, well, I want to do it again.

In the last two years on core I've dealt with various projects and
issues, including GPLv3 and various vendors donating code back to 
the project.  I have also dealt with the less fun aspect of core,
such as arbitrating disagreements, which, it turns out, was not as
bad as I feared it would be.

My goals now are much the same as when I ran the last time; to help
increase the exposure of FreeBSD, get the project into new
areas, such as embedded, and to help us, the developers of FreeBSD
to get our code into as many hands as possible.

Thanks for your consideration,
George

Track changes.

Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 17 11:53:53 2008

My name is Hiroki Sato, a 30-year-old Japanese.  I have joined as a
doc committer (mentored by kuriyama@) since 2000 and a ports committer
(mentored by linimon@) since 2004.  I have joined Release Engineering
Team and Documentation Engineering Team since 2004, FreeBSD Foundation
board member since May 2008, and I was one of the core team member in
2006-2008.  My primary working area includes writing release
documents, doc tree tagging, maintaining my ports (most of them are
text processing software), and so on.

The reasons why I am interested in running for the second term of the
core team are almost the same as ones in my 2006 candidate statement.
For two years I have worked on AsiaBSDCon held twice in Japan as a
chairperson with George to offer communication opportunities between
developers in all over the world and Japanese folks, who are famous
for being shy from face-to-face communication, as well as to publicize
FreeBSD to organizations such as local companies and people in
academia.  It was one of my 2006's pledges and is still what I would
like to continue.

Another public promise I mentioned was to contribute to improving
FreeBSD's quality as a production.  Honestly, I think I could not
achieve as I expected for this area, primarily due to limitation of my
spare time.  However, I am still much interested in improving various
aspects of the quality which include performance, documentation, and
developer's infrastructure.  For instance, I have continued to offer
access to sparc64 SMP boxes (currently used for package building), and
planning a new service to distribute daily snapshot for various
architecture to promote testing.  Of course, I am going to continue my
contribution including ones described above regardless of whether I
will be the member or not.

The core team should continue to keep its members diverse.  I hope I
will be able to take heed of importance of communication from Asian
people's point of view as well as advance a view based on my
experiences as a committer and a member of re@ and doceng@.

Please vote me if you consider me as worthy of inclusion in the new
core team.  Thank you for your consideration,

Hiroki Sato

Track changes.

Jack F Vogel <jfv@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 11 21:45:19 2008

I had involvement with FreeBSD back in the mid 90s while
working at Sun. These days I am maintainer for Intel network
drivers. I have 25 years of Unix programming experience.

My motivation is that I always support the underdog, I love
FreeBSD and want to see it surpass Linux or at least continue
to do well against it :)

I have and will continue to help the community as best as I am
able inside Intel, but I think doing so in the core team would
be a good addition.

Track changes.

Juli Mallett <jmallett@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 4 23:40:31 2008

Several years ago Mike Smith left the Core Team saying, "it's not fun anymore."
Well, what could be more fun than standing as a candidate with no hope of being
elected?  That's exactly what negacore has done in past elections, and what I am
standing for this time.

I beg you not to elect me.  My attention span was surely forged in the shadow of
the Peter Wemm Murphy Field judging by its numerous inherent faults, and I
haven't done anything much for FreeBSD recently.  Sure, there are a lot of
things I'd like to do, but it never seems to happen (which is unsurprising given
the amount of effort I put in.)  Please, help make sure that I end up as part
of negacore once again: vote me straight to the bottom of the list.

There should be many qualified, respected, reasonable people running, and I
expect to measure up to nearly nil on all of those fronts.  You should really
be able to find some people you desperately want to elect.  Hell, why not elect
the current team once more?  They've done some great things and have handled
their duties wisely and with reason, as we've all seen from the reports over the
last two years.

When (not if, please) elected to negacore, I will follow through on a platform
not of change, but of something even more boring than the status quo.  It's
exciting to talk about change, but the Core Team isn't supposed to be exciting,
they're supposed to be reliable.  To that end, I intend to be the most reliable
negacore member of all time.  If ever a non sequitur or bad decision is needed,
I'll be there.  If ever somebody ready, willing and able to lead the FreeBSD
project into a pit of despair is needed, I will be there.  Or, perhaps even more
true to the job description, I will be nowhere to be found.  I will forget the
key to the cabal IRC channel and start bouncing all FreeBSD-related email to
president@whitehouse.gov -- let them deal with it, I have more important things*
to do.

You think we should convert the CVS^W^H SVN repository to git, Kris?  Negacore
will instead convert all of the /developers/ to gits.  As some have pointed out,
this plan is fundamentally flawed, and we like it that way.  So please, please,
elect me to negacore, and reelect all of the wonderful people serving on the
Core Team today for another two years of painstaking misery for our benefit,
and replace the lousy ones with CIA plants.  I suggest philodendrons.

* - i.e. investigating the differences in flavor-to-cost ratio in leading and
    generic whipped cream brands.

Track changes.

Julian Elischer <julian@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 18 20:02:59 2008

I've been associated with FreeBSD since about the beginning.

I'm from Australia, born early enough to have been programming
well before many of the developers were born (35 years) 
and currenly have 2.9 children (maybe 3 as you read this?).

I think I was offline on the week they actually started FreeBSD
but I was in shortly after that. Before that I maintained
the central machine for the 386BSD patchkit development.
The three years before that ('90-93) I was already
working on the BSD4.3 kernel and Mach 2.6 (based largely
on BSD4.3) for work, so 386BSD and FreeBSD was a natural
progression.

Since then I have had a hand in (to various extents):

The original scsi system. (actually still in NetBSD I'm told)
The original devfs. (still in MacOS-X)
The first generic (BIOS based) boot blocks
Divert sockets
IPFW 
Netgraph
Threading the kernel
The 4bsd scheduler
many other things I've forgotten.

Sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.
I promise I have never been in the VM system.

Over the years, I have learned that the thing that keeps
the project going is the general cohesiveness of the group.
I've stood back for several years NOT running to be a
part of core, however the stars aligned this time
so I think that the time has come to do my bit for the group.

I have a lot of historical experience and have, I think a reasonable
grip on keeping people working together and  civil. I also speak fluent cat,
which helps in the cat-herding part of the job. One could of course never
hope to compare with JKH in that department.

I'm not running on technical merits. I don't think that is 
what being in core is actually about. It's about making sure that
developers can develop, and that the group acts well with internal
and external players. Sometimes it means "tough love" but often it
just requires a nudge here or a hint there.

Anyhow I've put my hat in the ring so if it looks good to you..

Track changes.

Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 11 21:40:17 2008

Most of you know me from email already, and during the time I am part
of the FreeBSD team there were abundant chances to work closely with a
fair number of people.  Having said that, a brief reintroduction is
probably going to be very useful.  Our team has many new members now,
since the last time I sat down to write a core statement.

The first time I used FreeBSD, I was coming from a Linux background,
and a failed attempt to install OpenBSD.  I managed to trash my
partitions with the OpenBSD installer, and threw the CD-ROM out of the
window.  The next morning, I borrowed a FreeBSD CD-ROM and printed a
copy of the Handbook's installation chapter.  I still remember the
feeling of exhilarating fun and amusement of actually installing a BSD
system at home.  The well-written Handbook was back then and still is
one of the points of FreeBSD that I admire and cherish a lot.

I guess that nicely explains why I eventually became a documentation
committer.  I always wanted to help with the effort of producing this
sort of excellent technical documentation :-)

When the elections of 2006 started, I entered the vote because it
seemed like an excellent opportunity to help a bit with the Project in
yet another way.  To be frank, I didn't really expect to be elected,
but I was.  That was amusing...

During the time I spent on core, I found out that it isn't, after all,
as scary as it sounds.  My ${realjob} work was a role similar to our
Release Engineers, and it took a hell of a lot of time out of FreeBSD,
that I didn't expect at first, but its combination with the way our
core works has visible effects in the way I think about teams and
software in general.

A lot of my time these last 2 years has gone into learning about and
working with various VCS tools and systems.  This turned out to be
quite useful too, as it coincided nicely with the conversion to
Subversion, and I was thrilled to see how good a job Peter did.  One
of the things that the time at core has taught me is a more pragmatic
view of the world too.  My own choice of a VCS wouldn't be Subversion,
but once Peter started the conversion it felt most sensible to jump in
and offer my assistance.  In any other case, I'd probably not done
anything at all.  After the current term at core, I know now that what
is good for the Project as a whole is not necessarily what is always
the personal preference of any one person.  This is one of the
important lessons I'm taking with me, and if this was the only good
thing from the last two years, I'd still be immensely pleased.

Strange as it may sound, I think I have personally learned a lot and
some times even helped a tiny bit with the work of the core team.
Therefore, I'm running for a core seat for a second term.

Thanks for reading this through,
Giorgos

Track changes.

Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 16 15:08:59 2008

I have been a FreeBSD user since 1994 and a committer since 1999,
and have held a number of roles in the project over that time.  I
started as a ports committer, but have also dabbled in src.  I've
been a member of portmgr since the team was created, and developed
and maintain the package build cluster.  Most ports committers have
heard from me at some time ;)  I am also a former security officer.

These-days my main interests lie in a couple of areas:

* I continue to have an interest in the architecture and direction
of the ports collection, although I don't do much port-level work
these-days.  Actually I would love to evolve the ports collection
into a more scalable system, but that turns out to be tricky.

* Performance analysis and optimization.  We have made huge strides
in SMP performance, and it's important that we continue to study
our code to determine where it's falling short.  Some of these areas
we already know about, but there are always more things to measure
and fix.

* Distributed computing.  We have some great tools for this problem
space but we need to develop them and add others.  It's where a
large part of the industry is heading.

* Automated testing.  Not just testing for bugs - though that is
important.  Measuring performance of code changes is also critical:
often we only discover major performance regressions long after the
fact by accident, and there are too many possibilities to rely on
manual testing.

What do I want to see for the future of FreeBSD?

We've shown that even with the enormous difference in community
size and financial backing we are still competitive with (or better
than ;) Linux in important areas.  This is something we can be proud
of, and I will keep working with our developers to continue to raise
the bar.

However, we can do more to advocate these strengths.  Members of
the core team, being the closest we have to project leadership, are
in a good position to tell the world about our successes.  I have
done some work on this in the past through conference presentations
and interviews, and I plan to continue.

I want to see FreeBSD extend our tradition of solid engineering
into other directions.  We should be focusing more on the quality
of our code: analyzing it not just when it breaks, but when it
works.  I hope to provide some leadership in this area as well as
working on the tools needed to facilitate it.

Track changes.

Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 11 20:52:36 2008

Campaign slogan: It's about time!

For the last 10 years or so, I've been working in various corners
of the FreeBSD repository. It all started with the Linuxulator,
then maintained by Soren. I'm now mostly working on making FreeBSD
a true multi-platform OS in general and improving support on ia64
and powerpc in particular. Examples of my work include uart(4)
and more recently gpart(8). But my contributions are not limited
to the src tree alone (though it is the most significant). I used
to maintain ports related to the Linuxulator and I try to keep the
platform pages up-to date for ia64.

My current work is typical for how I see FreeBSD, whether as it is
now or what I think it should become: a generic operating system
that can be used in embedded devices on one end of the spectrum,
and in high-end servers on the other end.
To give users the "FreeBSD experience" across the board is not a
trivial task and requires a certain amount of alignment of both
developers and users alike. Flexibility is the keyword.

My reasons to run for -core again are driven this time mostly by
the fact that I have the support from my employer. The desire to
contribute more than just on the technical front has not changed
over the years. It's the lack of time and support that made me
skip last years election. While, I'm sure, it's by far the most
unsexy reason in the history of FreeBSD, it enables me to spend
the time it takes to be a -core member. Time is key: without it
nothing happens and according to the infinite monkey theorem,
everything is possible given infinite time.

Questions? Let me know and I'll answer them here...

Track changes.

Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 10 22:00:53 2008

I have served on the Core Team for the past 6 years, and I'd like to
again serve to continue my work.  During the past 2 years I have
primarily divided my time between advocacy, corporate relations, the
website/documentation, and Summer of Code.  In previous years I was
also involved in release engineering and installation tools.  Over the
next 2 years I will again devote my time to these activities.

Some of my specific accomplishments over this past term include:

* Leading the FreeBSD participation in two successive Google Summer of
  Code programs (with help of rwatson and all the mentors).  We had 46
  students in the past two years of participation in this program, and
  33 students in the first two years.  This amounts to nearly $400,000
  of investment in FreeBSD development by Google and helped bring at
  least 8 new full-fledged committers into the project.

  http://murrayfreebsd.blogspot.com/2008/02/where-are-they-now-freebsd-summer-of.html

* Continuing to improve our web presence, with integration with social
  networking sites and mapping APIs to spruce up the events and
  usergroups areas and generally modernize our site.  I've also
  developed a voting mechanism for development ideas to improve the
  process of example projects for new contributors and summer of code
  students [1].  This builds on the design done by Emily Boyd, a
  Summer of Code student I mentored in 2005.  I'm currently working
  with the FreeBSD Foundation and Core to publish a privacy policy for
  the website.

  [1] http://apps.stokely.org/ideas/
  http://murrayfreebsd.blogspot.com/2008/04/thoughts-on-wwwfreebsdorg-2-of-2.html

* Participating on doceng, marketing, and release engineering teams,
  in roughly that order of activity.

Contributions during prior terms on core include: primary release
engineer for FreeBSD 4.x, maintainer of sysinstall, maintainer of isc
dhclient, etc.

In the past I've also given talks about FreeBSD at conferences such as
the O'Reilly European OSCon, BSDCan, GUFICon Milan, BSDCon Europe,
BSDCon, USENIX NordU, NYCBSDCon, and Linux Expo Shanghai.  I've also
spoken at user groups and universities in Japan, Ukraine, Russia,
China, U.S., the U.K.  I've also presented about FreeBSD to companies
such as Wells Fargo Bank, Fry's Electronics, TechTV, and more.

I work at Google in San Francisco and devote 20% of my time to working
on projects such as Summer of Code, open source conference
sponsorship, sponsored development projects, and other open source
initiatives.

I worked from 1997-2001 at Walnut Creek CDROM/BSDi/Wind River
building FreeBSD-based products for end-users and I think this gave me a
unique product- and user-focused perspective on FreeBSD development that is
important for the project.

Track changes.

David E. O'Brien <obrien@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 18 01:22:45 2008

I've been a FreeBSD committer since 1996, and a user since 2.0.
My FreeBSD activities include:
+ Maintained parts of the toolchain for over 7 years
+ Much work in src/contrib and general code cleanups
+ Been part of the release engineering team starting with 4.1 up
  thru the mid-5 series
+ I also wrote part of the FreeBSD Handbook & Porter's Handbooks.
+ At one time I had the highest port maintenance count of over
  130 ports -- though that record has since been surpassed. :-)
+ Donations@ team member.
+ I am a src, ports, and docs committer - highly ranked in terms of
  number of commits in both src and ports.

I state all this not to say that one must be an uber committer or developer
to be qualified to run for Core.  But rather I think one of the most
important things for a Core member to do is be very active within The FreeBSD
Project before being elected.  Be that advocacy, administrative, or development.

I also feel that Core activities should be a priority among all things in
their FreeBSD life.  (This also goes for all the other "hats" in the project.)
And that Core members should not wear too many FreeBSD "hats" or they cannot
fully serve their responsibilities well.  As part of this I feel that "did not
vote" Core votes should be the exception rather than the norm.  Rather the
norm should be a vote of real opinion ("yes" or "no") as that says to me the
Core member put time and thought into the issue.

My most applicable attribute as a candidate is that I passionately dedicate
myself to things I commit to.  Core needs active members.  I have dedicated
myself to The FreeBSD Project for the past 13 years and made FreeBSD a major
part of my life.  To this end, I strongly promoted FreeBSD at my previous
employeer - getting much hardware donated to the Project.  I now work for a
vendor that bases their product on FreeBSD, and which wants to become more
active with the community and give back to the community.

I feel too many discussions are labeled a "bike shed" and immediately
discounted.  I believe the project should pay more attention to letting
all committers state their position and having their position considered
in direction and decisions.

I have been involved in our multi-platform efforts, and think this is an
important aspect of FreeBSD and a big part of our future.

Track changes.

Peter Wemm <peter@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 17 17:24:09 2008

I was first exposed to FreeBSD in 1994, and I've been a committer since 1995,
right about when 2.0.5 was happening.  I was foolish enough to step in for
Rod Grimes to take over the cvs tree administration, and found myself invited
to core by the end of 1995.  I've worked on FreeBSD at Yahoo since 1999.  I
didn't run for core re-election in 2006, and have subsequently enjoyed my 3
year break from core.  (Not a typo.)

Things I've learned in the last 14 years:
-----------------------------------------
* You can't please everybody all of the time.  Sometimes the only way to get
somewhere is to aim for upsetting the least number of people, by the
smallest amount.  The art of knowing when to make that call is far from an
exact science.  I do not claim to be an expert.

* We jokingly refer to debates as 'bikeshed' arguments, but sometimes that
is used as a weapon to dismiss an argument that someone doesn't agree with.
Yes, we do a lot of bikeshedding (it is the nature of the kind of group of
people that we are), but it isn't always without substance.

* We are a very quirky bunch of people, putting it mildly.  I've learned which
people tend to react in what way to something, and seen what works (and what
doesn't) at solving problems or disputes.

* In spite of our quirks, we're *generally* a fairly compatible group.
I sometimes wonder if the FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD/DragonflyBSD divisions are
as much about interpersonal compatability as it is about technical issues.

* We have to consider compatability above technical ability sometimes.
Getting seriously incompatible people into the group causes pain and
suffering for years.  There have been a few incidents over my time on core
where we were talked into going against our better judgement on this, and
everybody suffered.

* Tools are vitally important, both for development and for end users.  We
used CVS to great benefit long before revision control was trendy.  Things
like DTrace, coverity, llvm, etc bring so much more to the table.

* Politics sucks.  I have no desire to be involved in politics, nor much
tolerance for it.  I guess I must be a slow learner, huh?

* Administrivia sucks.  I desire to keep this to a minimum.  Delegation is
a good thing.  I guess that clinches the slow learner theory.

Future directions:
------------------
My opionions on where FreeBSD should go is mixed.  On one hand, it would be
nice if we could rule the world, but the reality is different.  There are
a number of things about our project that both help and hurt us.  But they
also define our character.  We are who we are, and we have the resources
that we have.  I'm all for going after new opportunities and new directions,
as long as we don't forget what we have going for us.  Waving of hands
doesn't magically make something possible in a volunteer organization.
I wish I had a magic wand.

We're a decent unix and a decent server OS.  We're OK as a desktop (I run
-current on both of my desktops, at home and work), but we lean heavily
on 3rd party work for this that is written for Linux.

A big opportunity is the embedded space.  Being able to produce a non
encumbered system is a big win for people who care about such things, and
something Linux can't really match - especially with recent GPL trends.

We need to keep our strengths in mind and not lose focus on what we're
good at.

Vision statement:
-----------------
20/15 or better.

Track changes.

Remko Lodder <remko@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 17 08:44:02 2008

Dear fellow developers,

Since 2004 I am one of the "official" developers for the FreeBSD project,
starting with the FreeBSD Dutch Documentation Project (Which I still lead,
though less progress comes out of it due to lack of helping people), slowly
growing into the regular doc/www team with the help from Simon Nielsen.

Apart from that I also got a special interest in the Security Team, of
which I am a member, and the Security Team Secretary, focussing mainly
on ports-vuxml (last commit to vuxml had been some time ago, I admit)
and helping writing advisories, for which I had done a few in the last
period.

Beyond that I try to help out the Bugmeisters team and am helping the
bugbuster team(s) to reduce the overall PR load and help -resolve-
old items.

Last but not least, I am also a src/ committer, not as bright as most
of the people around, but hopefully helpful enough to reduce the simple
PR's and commit new device driver additions etc. so that you guys/girls
have more time to spend on the fun things of the project.

Recently I am also becoming increasingly involved with some projects
in the Netherlands, where I am trying to push in a fair share of FreeBSD
material (all upcoming but in the works).

In the personal life I am the father of a 5 year old, which most often
reminds me how discussions in the project also go :-). Sometimes people
agree with others, sometimes they trash around, which is where I think
I can come into play. Behind the scene's I try to resolve potential
issues every now and then. I try to bring the developers closer to
eachother and try to find the right guy for the right job (or girl).

I understand that I am not the brightest coder, hacker in the development
team, neither do I entirely understand all code-driven parts of it, but
I try to and always try my best to get the best results for FreeBSD.

I think it's the only logical well-suited extension for my continued
contributions for the FreeBSD Project.

Thanks,
Remko

Track changes.

Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 18 09:42:26 2008

I first discovered FreeBSD in 1994, becoming a FreeBSD committer in 1999.  
I joined core in 2000 as part of the first elected core team, and have been 
involved in many technical and non-technical aspects of the FreeBSD Project 
over the years.

I created the TrustedBSD Project in 2000, leading to the addition of access 
control lists, mandatory access control, audit, and a variety of other 
security improvements to FreeBSD.  I have also been involved in work on the 
MPSAFE network stack and parallel network stack performance, jail, the Coda 
file system, system monitoring and debugging tools, the release engineering 
and security officer teams, and numerous other technical projects.

On the less technical side, I've been involved in organizing developer 
summits, mentored new FreeBSD developers, helped to organize our Google 
Summer of Code participation, mentored several summer of code students, 
created our quarterly status reports program, participated in the program 
committees for countless BSD conferences, and have advocated for FreeBSD in 
a variety of forums through conference papers, media interviews, invited 
talks, and by creating material to support similar advocacy by others in 
the project.  I joined the FreeBSD Foundation Board of Directors in 2003, 
where my responsibilities have included fund-raising, project management, 
and visiting companies the do or may want to use FreeBSD to discuss how 
FreeBSD fits into their environment, and to encourage them to become more 
involved in the FreeBSD community.  On the core team, I've been involved in 
technical leadership, conflict resolution, the paperwork of the project, 
and legal work.

In terms of vision: one of the distinguishing properties of the FreeBSD 
Project has long been its effective use of tools: revision control,
profiling and debugging tools, build infrastructure, etc, allowing a small
number of highly skilled developers to produce an excellent operating
system despite many fewer resources than the open and closed source
systems it competes against.

The rest of the world is moving forward, and in order to maintain our 
technical leadership, we need to adopt, and in some cases create, new 
technologies to improve our efficiency, but also to bring into reach levels 
of quality and degrees of complexity that would otherwise be beyond the 
scope of an organization of our size.  A key goal for me has been to
improve the tools we use to produce FreeBSD.  This is an exciting time to
consider projects of this nature, as the tools available for source code
management, analysis, and checking are dramatically improving, and several
open source technologies in this area are gradually approaching maturity.
I think we can make a significant contribution here, both improving our own
work and improving what is available to the broader open source community.

An ideal core team blends new hands with experienced ones, bringing energy 
and new ideas while reflecting a mature and hard-learned understanding of 
the structure of the FreeBSD Project.  I encourage developers to look for 
some key attributes from any core team member: most importantly, excitement 
and enthusiasm about about FreeBSD and where we can go and a clear 
long-term commitment to the project, but also tolerance for differing 
opinions and a willingness to be flexible and negotiate in the face of 
challenges.

Core team members will need to be patient and willing to deal with the 
flames they *will* receive regularly from FreeBSD developers, users, and 
other random individuals who take a dislike to FreeBSD, or to them 
personally.  Likewise, core team members should have a high tolerance for 
talking to lawyers, CEOs, and other generally non-technical people about 
FreeBSD.  The importance of pragmatism should not be overlooked.  Finally,
core team members will frequently be called on to represent the FreeBSD
Project: they should be someone you are comfortable with representing you
in public forums.

Track changes.

Wilko Bulte <wilko@FreeBSD.org>

Last modified: Jun 14 11:01:37 2008

As most of you probably know, I am one of the oldtimers (groan..) who
started playing with PC-based BSD in the days that 386BSD plus patchkit were
current and exciting stuff.  But as usual, time flies when you are having
fun.  It still continues to be a lot of fun for me, or I would not be
sitting here writing up this text.

Apart from playing with 386BSD in those days I was a hardware design
engineer.  Which, I found out later, can be a scary thing for you folks out
there that perceive hardware as a necessary evil..  My first computer was
built from TTL chips, my first harddisk a 10 Mbyte affair I bought broken and
fixed before it could be used.

My involvement with FreeBSD really took off when I stared a scruffy, jetlagged
guy in the face who rang at the door in Arnhem (NL) were I was one of the
organisers of the 1st Dutch Hackersparty.  It soon turned out this guy was
Jordan Hubbard.  I took him to visit to one of these shops the Dutch are
famous for, and the rest is history.  Jordan sponsored me for a commit bit
in 2000 I think.  Later on I was a founder and sat on the board of
the Dutch BSD-Users Group (after we realised that the original NLFUG
designation sounds a bit typical when pronounced by a native-English speaker)..

Over the years I did multiple things in the FreeBSD project, probably most
notably working on the now retired FreeBSD/alpha port.  This included 
documentation and release engineering.  In more recent days I played
nitpicker^Wreviewer for the 2 editions of mwlucas "Absolute FreeBSD".
As a side job I am part of the donations@ team, representing core.

When the call for assistance came from core to enlist a core secretary I 
volunteered (some of you thought I lost my wits completely by the way).  In 
retrospect I feel getting a core secretary position created has proven to be very 
helpful.  It is no diffrent for the current core team, the core secretary keeps things
running for core (thanks Joel, Philip!).  For me personally it has proven to be an 
unique opportunity to "look behind the scenes" of a leading Open Source project
leadership team.  As a consequence of serving as the core secretary I
stood up for core, and got elected (wow.. I was *very* surprised, I freely admit).

I am a strong believer in "small government", which in this specific case
means that I feel all the people in the FreeBSD project should be smart
(and mature) enough to resolve most things without core intervention.  During
the last couple of years core has delegated quite a bit of responsibilities
to other teams.  portmgr, doceng etc have proven that a more distributed and
load-shared approach to the project steering teams is both possible,
practical and, most importantly, very effective.  Should the need arise,
core is there to be the arbiter to those issues that need it.  These days
core works more behind the scenes, quite often with the FreeBSD Foundation.

Don't get me wrong: not everything the current core team that I serve on has
turned out to be a success.  Some things just did not work the way we/I
expected, and were abandoned.  Notable example is the TRB, it just did not
work.

Those failures should not distract us from the fact that most things 
*did* work, overall the Project is in my view running relatively smoothly.  
We can always do better, and we should obviously keep
trying to improve.  Serving on core is by no means easy, always satisfying
etc etc.  But fascinating for me it remains as much as it was when I first
sat on core's sideline as the first core sec.

Although for some of you this might sound strange, I am interested in a
second tour on core.  That is because I continue to be very interested
in the daily running of one of the worlds leading Open Source projects.  I
feel that FreeBSD has fullfilled and continues to fullfil a very important
role in the Open Source world.  "All the world is Linux" is just as bad as "All
the world is VAX^WWindows".  Friendly competition keeps everybody honest, and
innovation fueled.

Thanks for reading this,

Wilko

Track changes.