| Throughout our long history, the
  FreeBSD Mall has had a mutually beneficial relationship with the
  FreeBSD Project, supporting the community in numerous ways, some of
  which are listed below: 
Provided a reliable source of software,
    documentation and support.  Our CDROMs and books had a
    professional polish that competing projects (NetBSD and OpenBSD)
    were unable to match, especially in the early days.  This gave
    FreeBSD a decisive edge, at a time when it wasn't clear which of
    the BSD branches would dominate.Maintained customer-friendly policies,
    including an unconditional "no-hassle" return policy, and
    empowered employees to quickly resolve any customer satisfaction
    problem.Paid the salary of important FreeBSD developers,
    so they could work on FreeBSD full time.Provided the FreeBSD project with
    hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hardware.Provided giga-bit level bandwidth for
    people wishing to download FreeBSD.  Our FTP server also
    functioned as a high profile showcase for FreeBSD's capabilities
    and stability.Paid fees and travel/hotel expenses for
    key FreeBSD developers to participate in technical conferences,
    including SOSP, OSDI, Usenix, and several security symposiums.Developed and distributed advocacy
    material, including white
    papers, web resources, comparison
    charts, etc.Devoted a full time employee to the
    FreeBSD Documentation Project.Paid employees to answer questions on
    the FreeBSD Mailing Lists.Paid employees to respond to and
    resolve FreeBSD Problem Reports.Helped many of the local FreeBSD User
    Groups increase their membership and improve their visibility by
    including them in our tradeshows and BOFs, and by providing
    publicity, promotional materials, guest speakers, web-links,
    organizational assistance, direct mail services, and
    co-sponsorship of events.Provided hundreds of free CDs and books
    to local universities, and sent guest speakers to talk to Computer
    Science students about FreeBSD.Sponsored and supported numerous
    FreeBSD Installathons.  We provided free
    discs, technical staff, snacks, etc.Developed retail box packaging for
    FreeBSD, and professional quality books.  Introduced FreeBSD into
    mainstream retail stores, including CompUSA, Best Buy, Border's
    Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.Conceived, organized, and funded the
    first two BSD Conferences.Contributed money to the FreeBSD
    Foundation to support the porting of Java to FreeBSD, improvement
    of FreeBSD 5.X SMP support, and other activities that the FreeBSD
    Foundation has engaged in.Contributed $5,000 to the FreeBSD
    Foundation in February 2004.Contributed shirts, CDs, DVDs, and
     promotional materials to the Ukrainian FreeBSD User
     Group.Contributed CDs to the AfNOG 2008 Workshop
      and Meetings. |