EuroBSDCon 2026

How Fast Can We Patch?
2026-09-13 , D.0.02

Today's security landscape is terrifyingly different from what we enjoyed a year ago. How does FreeBSD help keep us secure in this new and uncertain time?

What's the pipeline from patch -> patched with FreeBSD? How fast can we go? What's stopping us from going faster?

This talk covers:

  • how the security posture evolved on a commercial FreeBSD project
  • the plumbing within the FreeBSD releng, security, & clusteradm teams to support this
  • a behind-the-scenes look at what the project plans to do in the near future

Dave has spent the last 2 decades trying to stay at least 1 step ahead of The Bad Actors on the internet, starting off with OpenBSD 2.8 in 2000, and the last 12 years with FreeBSD since 9.3, where he has a ports commit bit, and a prediliction for obscure functional programming languages that align with his enjoyment of distributed systems, & power tools with very sharp edges.

  • Professional Yak Herder, shaving BSD-coloured yaks since ~ 2000
  • Ansible DevOops & Elixir developer
  • enjoys telemark skiing, and playing celtic folk music on a variety of instruments
  • FreeBSD ports@ committer
  • FreeBSD Core emeritus
  • FreeBSD Foundation board