Giving Thanks for Open Source, Partnerships & Community in 2024

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Giving Thanks for Open Source, Partnerships & Community in 2024

It’s hard to believe 2024 is nearly over. But what a year it has been here at BeagleBoard.org Foundation.

We saw the release of BeagleY-AI — our low-cost, open-source, and community-supported development platform designed for developers, hobbyists, and anyone looking for a reliable single-board computer to build solutions to a wide range of computing, embedded systems, graphical interface and AI applications.

We sponsored three successful Google Summer of Code (GSoC) participants, where our mentees worked on free and open-source coding projects. These included:

Of course, these weren’t the only exciting projects and contributions we participated in. We generated a lot of interest in our weekly Zephyr hacking sessions. We also worked on advancing other open-source technologies like Microblocks, Greybus, Micropython on Zephyr, and dynamic device tree overlays in Linux, where we explored new ways to improve the experience of these various development solutions, especially on BeagleBoard.org platforms.

As 2024 draws to a close, we wanted to take a moment to give thanks for several important milestones BeagleBoard.org celebrated this year.

What We’re Thankful for in 2024

It goes without saying, technology is only as good as its users. This is something all developers can relate to.

That’s why we wanted to show gratitude to the open-source movement, new partnerships and our growing community.

Open-Source Encourages Innovation

Here at BeagleBoard, we firmly believe in open-source technology that makes easy things easier and hard things possible. 

This year alone, we saw many contributions to the open-source ecosystem that live up to that aspiration by democratizing general-purpose, real-time, and AI computing for everyone. In addition to the open-source BeagleY-AI platform, contributions to open projects like Zephyr, toolchains like PlatformIO, and build environments such as Yocto helped improve access to electronics education and productization.

Strong Relationships Signal a Strong Future

BeagleBoard continued to grow relationships in 2024 with companies like Balena, Bela, Bootlin, MikroElektronika, Mender.io, and more. 

These relationships play an important role in enabling design freedom and flexibility across tech stacks for students, makers, and commercial projects. They also align with our goal of creating solutions that encourage people to try new things by eliminating barriers to the development process.

BeagleBoard Community Continues to Grow

It’s no secret the BeagleBoard community is one of the most vibrant in the ecosystem. With nearly 60,000 users across the BeagleBoard.org forum, Discord, and our mailing list. In 2024 alone, we saw our Discord surpass 2,000 members. 

We’re incredibly lucky to have such a dedicated community of users who actively help drive the direction of BeagleBoard through their participation, requests, and contributions. Hard work and dedication from community members like you make working at the Foundation so rewarding.

We’re beyond excited for what the future holds as our community grows.

Let’s Shape the Future of Computing, Together

For BeagleBoard.org Foundation, showing thanks in 2024 means appreciating open-source technology, acknowledging partners who continue to believe in our vision, and, most importantly, celebrating our community of passionate developers who support and encourage each other and us every step of the way.

We are ecstatic about everything we accomplished together in 2024 and will continue to give back as much as we can to make computing better and more accessible for all.

– The BeagleBoard Team