The FreeBSD Foundation has begun receiving funding to work on zero-trust builds / reproducible builds. The work will hopefully be wrapped up in time for the major [1]FreeBSD 15.0 release.

The FreeBSD Foundation shared today they are receiving funding from Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency (nee Sovereign Tech Fund) to pursue this zero-trust builds / reproducible builds effort. The funding goes from this month through August. The FreeBSD Foundation explained in today's announcement:

"The Zero-Trust Build project is scheduled from Jan-Aug 2025 and centers on the FreeBSD build process, and in particular, release building. The primary goal of this work is to enable the entire release process to run without requiring root access, and that build artifacts build reproducibly – that is, that a third party can build bit-for-bit identical artifacts.

Additionally, the project aims to enhance build process documentation, ensuring that release building is straightforward and does not require specialized knowledge. The work is targeted for completion prior to the release of FreeBSD 15.0."

More details on this fresh funding and zero-trust builds effort via the [2]FreeBSD Foundation Blog . Back in August is when the Sovereign Tech Fund initially [3]announced a significant investment into FreeBSD for pursuing a number of areas like zero-trust builds, CI/CD automation, greater security controls, and more.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/FreeBSD+15.0

[2] https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/zero-trust-builds-for-freebsd/

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Sovereign-Tech-Fund-FreeBSD