Organizational Changes to the NetBSD Project
============================================  
 
In 1997 the NetBSD Foundation, the nonprofit corporation which manages
development of the NetBSD operating system, failed to pay its
corporate fees and lapsed as a legal entity.  Shortly thereafter, in
1999, Herb Peyerl resigned from the Foundation's Board of Directors,
causing the Board to fail to meet the requirements of the
corporation's bylaws, which required a minimum of three directors.
 
In 2002 the developers of NetBSD, who are the members and owners of
the Foundation, voted to reorganize the corporation through an open
process of instituting new Bylaws, electing a new Board, and making
good on all legal obligations, such as back taxes and fees.  In the
past 4 years, NetBSD has grown and flourished under the supervision of
four Boards of directors elected by the membership, adding 83
developers, and releasing 6 new versions of NetBSD and 12 quarterly
branches of pkgsrc, its third-party packaging system, with (currently)
6226 packages.
 
In the past year, one focus of the Foundation has been on ensuring the
security of our systems, the accountability of our developers, and the
clear legal status of the software we develop and distribute.  Since
before the reorganization of the Foundation in 2000 all developers
have been required to sign an agreement stating the terms under which
they will participate in NetBSD; in return for this they are granted
access to change our source tree and the right to participate in our
internal democratic process.  In the 1990s, the signed agreements for
many developers were lost, and due to administrative oversights some
developers continued for many years without agreements.

Over the past year, as the last step in the process of reorganization
of the Foundation that began in 2002, we have made a concerted effort
to contact those remaining developers without current agreements and
ensure their continued participation in NetBSD.  Despite hundreds of
hours spent on this process by our volunteers we have not obtained
agreements from a few people.  Our Board and Executive Committee on
Membership therefore directed that developer access for those without
agreements be disabled effective Friday, September 1, 2006; all those
affected by this change were notified one week in advance.

We therefore bid a fond farewell to the following NetBSD developers,
who have made many significant contributions to NetBSD in the past 13
years, for which we are very grateful.  We expect that as time and
circumstances permit, we may see many of their faces again, along with
the 346 others who help make NetBSD what it is today:

        Lennart Augustsson
        Matt Debergalis
        Brian C. Grayson
        Charles M. Hannum
        Matthias Pfaller
        Dante Profeta
        Darren Reed
        Kazuki Sakamoto

With thanks,

Alistair Crooks
President
The NetBSD Foundation