'For many ... vendors, the BSD license is very important compared to the GPL' Tim Anderson Wed 10 Mar 2021 // 11:03 UTC Share Copy It's not as well known as Linux, but FreeBSD has plenty of hardcore fans. In a wide-ranging chat covering licensing, architectures including RISC-V, and a development model that's free of a "dictator", The Reg spoke to members of the project about new release features and more. FreeBSD 13.0 has just reached release candidate 1 and is scheduled to come out at the end of March – with key new features including a complete LLVM toolchain, faster networking, and improved ZFS file system. Major new releases come every two years or so: 12.0 was pushed out in December 2018, and 12.2 in October 2020. We spoke to kernel developer John Baldwin and Ed Maste, who is a FreeBSD committer and director of Project Development for the FreeBSD Foundation.