(However, what can they really do with that money? Operating systems aren't the sexiest of free software projects to work on, so I would be tempted to think that manpower is FreeBSDs biggest limiter.)
The Foundation's financials are open, so you can see how the money has been used in the past. The short version is that our 2014 budget was on track to spend about half that amount (i.e., approaching half a million) on funded project development, through permanent staff and development contracts. The other portion goes into supporting conferences, hardware purchases for the FreeBSD cluster, and staff time to support the FreeBSD project.
Keep in mind that this donation won't be spent in one year; we'll be able to find qualified uses for this money.
> funded project development, through permanent staff and development contracts
Somewhat of an aside, how do you guys manage the relationship between volunteers and paid work? Mixing the two has a historically poor track record in the open source community (eg. Dunc Tank, etc. etc.)
emaste may be able to give an "official foundation answer" for this question, but from what I've seen the Foundation employees do the work which everybody agrees is important but nobody wants to do -- like haswell video acceleration and release engineering.
You can find their last two budget reports on the foundation's website. This looks like a huge cash injection and if they put it aside it will pretty much double their assets.
I don't know their hosting costs or if they have any need for more. But that money (or the investment returns) could be well spent on marketing for the project.
To date the FreeBSD Project has benefited from the generosity of a number of users of FreeBSD who donate data center space and connectivity. Some examples are Yahoo!, NYI, ISC, and Sentex.
The point about the need for and value of marketing is well taken; Anne Dickison joined the Foundation as Marketing Director earlier this year.
(However, what can they really do with that money? Operating systems aren't the sexiest of free software projects to work on, so I would be tempted to think that manpower is FreeBSDs biggest limiter.)