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| 1 | +# FreeBSD Update - October 2025 |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +## Immediate tasks |
| 4 | + |
| 5 | +One more major task was tackled this month, as per the timeline proposed for the |
| 6 | +project: |
| 7 | + |
| 8 | +* Propose list of priorities |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +The next task, planning the respective actions, is being coordinated with two |
| 11 | +committees of the FreeBSD Project (secteam@ and srcmgr@) and still ongoing. |
| 12 | + |
| 13 | +Connections have also been made with two other initiatives, where collaboration |
| 14 | +is believed to be mutually beneficial: the Open Regulatory Compliance Working |
| 15 | +Group (ORC WG) on one hand, and the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) initiative. |
| 16 | +Both are relevant to the new Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) from the European |
| 17 | +Union, and rely on the same information gathered as part of this project. |
| 18 | + |
| 19 | +## Timeline |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +The current timeline looks as follows: |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | +| Phase | Start date | End date | Status | |
| 24 | +| ------------------------------ | ---------- | ---------- | ------- | |
| 25 | +| Inventory of dependencies | 25/08/2025 | 07/09/2025 | Done | |
| 26 | +| Security risk assessments | 08/09/2025 | 21/09/2025 | Done | |
| 27 | +| Propose list of priorities | 22/09/2025 | 28/09/2025 | Done | |
| 28 | +| Plan the respective actions | 29/09/2025 | 26/10/2025 | Ongoing | |
| 29 | +| Formalize code owners | 27/10/2025 | 30/11/2025 | | |
| 30 | +| Integrate review methodologies | _continuous_ || | |
| 31 | +| Plan execution & coordination | _continuous_ || | |
| 32 | +| Final report | 09/03/2026 | 30/03/2026 | | |
| 33 | + |
| 34 | +### Task: Inventory of dependencies |
| 35 | + |
| 36 | +The inventory of third-party software used in the base system was completed, |
| 37 | +according to new information obtained from other FreeBSD developers. |
| 38 | + |
| 39 | +The |
| 40 | +[corresponding](https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/alpha-omega-beach-cleaning/blob/main/dependencies.md) |
| 41 | +[deliverables](https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/alpha-omega-beach-cleaning/blob/main/security.md) |
| 42 | +were re-generated accordingly from the [YAML |
| 43 | +database](https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/alpha-omega-beach-cleaning/blob/main/database.yml), |
| 44 | +as before. |
| 45 | + |
| 46 | +### Task: List of priorities |
| 47 | + |
| 48 | +A first list of priorities was communicated to the security team (secteam@) |
| 49 | +where the most critical components identified were: |
| 50 | + |
| 51 | +1. libfido2, OpenSSL, WireGuard, and ZFS (score: 4) |
| 52 | +2. ACPI, BearSSL, Kerberos, libcbor, Lua, OpenPAM, OpenSSH, and zlib (score: 3) |
| 53 | + |
| 54 | +### Task: Plan the respective actions |
| 55 | + |
| 56 | +In response, additional metrics have been proposed by the source management team |
| 57 | +(srcmgr@) and will be investigated in November: |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +* version gap, |
| 60 | +* time since last import, (if not forked) |
| 61 | +* presence and re-use of a test suite, |
| 62 | +* distance from upstream... (size of the patch) |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +An automated mechanism to identify the current version of the dependencies |
| 65 | +installed is [currently being |
| 66 | +implemented](https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/alpha-omega-beach-cleaning/tree/khorben/versions/src/versions). |
| 67 | + |
| 68 | +This is expected to help determine the actual plan, together with the relevant |
| 69 | +committees of the FreeBSD Project. |
| 70 | + |
| 71 | +### Collaboration: CRA and SBOM |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +The community around the CRA has now started to focus on self-attestations, in |
| 74 | +order to help Stewards for Open Source projects to comply with their |
| 75 | +responsibilities, and to communicate efficiently with any manufacturer |
| 76 | +downstream. |
| 77 | + |
| 78 | +In practice, this is expected to involve the creation of artefacts called SBOMs, |
| 79 | +a machine-readable inventory listing the components of a system, along with |
| 80 | +their respective provenance, dependencies and consumers, point of contact, |
| 81 | +licence, version and patch number, etc. |
| 82 | + |
| 83 | +This information is already being gathered as part of the beach cleaning |
| 84 | +project. The program converting the current database into the deliverables for |
| 85 | +this project has been extended in order to generate files in the [pkg-config |
| 86 | +format](https://people.freedesktop.org/~dbn/pkg-config-guide.html), to then be |
| 87 | +converted in the [SPDX format](https://spdx.dev) with the |
| 88 | +[bomtool](https://ariadne.space/2025/02/08/c-sboms-and-how-pkgconf.html) |
| 89 | +utility. |
| 90 | + |
| 91 | +This work is already taking place within the FreeBSD community for its |
| 92 | +[ports](https://ports.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi) but a gap subsisted for the base |
| 93 | +system. The outcome of this contribution is relevant to this gap. The generation |
| 94 | +of the corresponding artefacts is still in-progress, but can be found here: |
| 95 | + |
| 96 | +* [pkgconfig |
| 97 | + files](https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/alpha-omega-beach-cleaning/blob/main/pkgconfig) |
| 98 | +* [SPDX |
| 99 | + files](https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/alpha-omega-beach-cleaning/blob/main/spdx) |
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