# Stories in 2026

I’m Dave Cottlehuber as you likely already know, FreeBSD committer since
2017, served on Core.13 and now on the Foundation Board.

Today I would like to make you think hard about what the essence of
FreeBSD is, how we can make that story as compelling and interesting as
possible.

## Tablets

These clay tablets are around 4000 years old. They tell the story, in 5
parts, across 12 tablets, of Gilgamesh, King of the city of Uruk, one of
the great cities of that Sumeriah period, in Mesopotamia, or modern Iraq,
and rediscovered in sections.

The statue on the right, is an Assyrian statue, presumably Gilgamesh.

His story is so old, and so widespread, that it has influenced Abrahamic
religions, Greek mythology, and others across much of the world.

The tablets, despite being written in a language mostly incomprehensible,
have carried a powerful message across the great sands of time.

https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-the-worlds-oldest-known-literature

## We Need a Story

So how do we do in the wild?

The quote at the top is from a customer last year, and I have to agree.

We tend to see FreeBSD as a set of valuable attributes – clear structure,
modern toolchain, integrated zfs, flat development model, easily
customisable etc, but we don’t have that sharp, punchy, precise message
that sticks in people’s mind.

It’s the difference between having a space programme, or Kennedy’s speech
“we choose to go to the moon”

Between having a civil rights program, or Martin Luther King’s “I have a
dream”.

## Venn Diagrams

Nothing like a Venn Diagram. Not everything in FreeBSD is on this, bu most
of us should find a home.

Perhaps you’re the passionate amateur, you do this because you care, and
you’re proud of that.

Perhaps you’re a commercial contributor, or corporate committer. You’re
adding and improving things that make FreeBSD better for your world, your
end customers or users.

Or perhaps you’re part of the FreeBSD Foundation.

These groups have all different characteristics:
- out of the Community we continually see incredible spurts of change, but
it is not consistent
- our corporate users push things along every year, in their areas of
interest
- The Foundation supports patch and security, and longer-term development

We need to find that Story in the middle, that resonates with everybody.

## A Virtuous Circle

You’ll all recognise these tasks above – we already do them, and we have
building blocks of various levels of maturity, quality, and integration
there.

I’m suggesting that, as developers, we can think of the work we do, as
providing value to end users, and to customers, and vendors basing their
work on FreeBSD.

But - that value only lands when its in the hands of our users.

The value only lands when its in the hands of our users.

So if our “mission”, is “the fastest place to ship”, then we can think of
this circle as our workflow. And we should optimise it both for speed, and
for flexibility.

## Dev Locally

There is substantial community driven contribution in this space

- Windows, Balaje Sankars incredible work announced at BSDCan providing
WSL2 integration
- macOS, Faraz Vahedi & Danilo Egea Gondolfo have been working on
improving virtio & console support
- this with some small tooling from my enables apple container native
integration of FreeBSD – a lightweight FreeBSD VM and direct tooling
integration


## Contribute

We need to make contributing easier. This is everything from automating PR
testing and basic review / linting feedback, to identifying where sub
groups within FreeBSD need help, and in bringing on new contributors, from
those communities, to work together.

We need to be more open to more people, or we will not be around to see
it.


## Shared CI

We need to make CI easier. This is everything from automating PR testing
and basic review / linting feedback, and automating git pipelines and
branches, whether public or private.

I should be able to easily see if my custom code is broken on CURRENT
because of other stuff that is cooking.

This is vital for enabling downstream vendors to patch and test faster, in
this very unsure and insecure new world.

## Build Releases

Our release tooling should be an easy flag on our shared CI. It shouldn’t
rely on special scripts, custom build environments, and it should be
public.

Functionality like NanoBSD and mfsBSD should be integrated.

Again, almost all of this is actually available already today, it’s just
not quite joined up with all the other bits yet.


## Build Patches

Base system packages are IMHO a game changer. They are very easy to
generate from a custom source tree, to make available in a CI toolchain,
and publish to distribution servers or CDNs.

Again, we have the pieces, but they’re not joined up yet.


## Deploy Patches

Again, base system packages are IMHO a game changer. Doing upgrades via
pkg and with boot environments is an absolute delight.

Again, we have the pieces, but they’re not joined up yet.


## The Fastest Place to Ship

This sounds nice Dave, but what needs to change?

I propose the following ideas for discussion:

### Technical

- FreeBSD-in-a-box: git repos, simple CI, release, ports & base package
generation
- documented, extensible
- designed to fit into and beside upstream FreeBSD processes

### People

- Designed and built with community input so that it really works
- Reflection on how we work with contributors and grow them into
committers, where they can both help and shape the future

### Business

- We need a crystal clear story, backed by a realistic, achievable Plan
above
- This can be taken to vendors, potential customers, and shown how FreeBSD
can provide this *whole lifecycle* in one place, with one set of tools,
neatly integrated
- supporting new users, and new avenues for sponsorship

## Questions

This is a special place to many New Zealanders – Cape Reinga, almost the
most northern spot in the North Island.

In Māori, Te Rerenga Wairua means the leaping-off place of spirits, on
their path to the underworld.

The waters of both oceans collide and mix here, an excellent image to
ponder new directions and changing circumstances.

Find me during the conference, tell me what you think. Be inspired!

## Sources

- Gilgamesh

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decayƒ
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias", 1819 edition[16]

- Rachiobbs minecraft wallpaper

https://wallpapercave.com/w/wp6222525

- Doom Wallpaper

- item #18 on ScreenRant

https://screenrant.com/best-pc-games-play-without-video-graphics-card/