The third quarter of 2015, from July to September, was + again a period of busy activity for &os;: for the second quarter + in a row we have the largest report yet published.
-The third quarter of 2015 was another productive quarter for - the &os; project and community. [...]
+The Foundation continues to play a strong role, funding + travel to conferences and for much of the hardware that the + cluster administration team uses to keep things running, in + addition to sponsoring many development projects and providing a + presence for &os; at conferences. This quarter we also hear from + some of the student projects funded by Google Summer of Code 2015, + ranging a wide gamut from the bootloader to additional ARM + support, but also at a range of completion status: some work is in + the tree already, but others could benefit from additional + attention to help out our budding new contributors as their + schedules fill with the return to classes.
-Thanks to all the reporters for the excellent work!
+ZFS and the network stack continue to be strong areas for + &os;, with both receiving active maintenance and feature + improvements during this quarter. Substantial work continues on + arm64, potentially putting it on the path toward a promotion to + Tier-1 status, and a new port to the RISC-V architecture has made + great headway in a short period of time. But it is not just our + strengths and exciting new areas that have seen attention this + cycle; there are also some parts of the system that are frequently + seen as unchanging infrastructure that have seen attention and + improvements, with truss and (k)gdb + receiving significant overhauls, new implementations for the man + page tools being brought in, the website receiving a new skin, and + a brand new infrastructure for translating documentation that + greatly lowers the barrier to entry.
-The deadline for submissions covering the period from October - to December 2015 is January 7, 2016.
- ?> +Nonetheless, despite its record length, this report does + not and cannot cover all of the work being done on &os; throughout + the reporting period — there are many bug fixes too minor to + mention here, and developers too busy working on the next project + to write up an entry for the previous project. It is not just the + developers committing to Subversion that comprise the ongoing + activities of &os;, but also the users testing unreleased code or + reporting bugs in released code, participants on the mailing lists + and forums helping each other solve their problems — even + the chats on IRC that wander far from the stated topic of a + channel contribute to the community around &os;. It is that + community whose effectiveness and helpfulness is a key component + to the effectiveness and usefulness of &os; itself. Not just to + the developers listed in this report, but to everyone in the + community, thank you for making &os; a great operating + system.
+ +—Ben Kaduk
+ +Please submit status reports for the fourth quarter of 2015 + (from October to December) by January 7, 2016.