[lustre-announce] OpenSFS Transition and Futures

[ssimms at iu.edu]

Please accept my sincere apologies if this reaches you more than once.

Dear Members of the Lustre Community,

I write to you now with passion and enthusiasm about the restructure and 
transformation of OpenSFS into a user-driven organization dedicated to 
addressing the current and future needs of Lustre users.

It is my sincere pleasure to announce that on Thursday last week, after 
months of discussion and careful consideration, the OpenSFS Board 
transferred the organization to a new temporary board of users 
representing academia, business, and the national laboratories.  In 
addition to myself, the temporary board consists of

 	Shawn Hall, BP
 	Steve Monk, Sandia National Laboratory
 	Sarp Oral, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
 	Rick Wagner, Globus (formerly San Diego Supercomputing)

This board will remain in place until an election can be held at this 
year's Lustre User Group meeting (a 'save the date' message will be coming 
soon).

OpenSFS has accomplished many great things since its inception, providing 
leadership, manpower, and capital that have improved Lustre and ensured 
its place in the HPC ecosystem.  Now the time has come for those who rely 
most on Lustre, its users, to guide OpenSFS into the future to provide:

        - elected leadership
        - a unified voice
        - a user run Lustre User Group meeting
        - support for the Lustre Working Group
        - support for lustre.org along with EOFS
        - chances for frank and direct contact between vendors and users

To encourage participation from users and vendors alike, the membership 
model has been flattened to two categories and dues reduced significantly:

Members (user organizations) - $1,000 annual dues
 	- voting rights
 	- eligibility to serve on the board
 	- eligibility to serve on LUG planning committee
 	- eligibility to participate in requirements gathering

Participants (vendor organizations) - $5,000 annual dues
 	- support community efforts to promote Lustre
 	- opportunities for direct contact with User community
 	- access to community requirements gathering exercise
 	- eligible to attend OpenSFS member meetings

These changes are a positive step forward for OpenSFS and our community 
and we would love to have your involvement to help ensure Lustre remains 
open and to help shape Lustre's moving forward.

If you have questions about the organizational changes, would like to 
volunteer, or discuss future objectives, feel free to reach out to me, any 
of the temporary board members, or send mail to admin at opensfs.org. In the 
meantime, we will be moving forward with new streamlined bylaws available 
here:

http://cdn.opensfs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Open-SFS-Amendment-and-Restated-Bylaws_Final_091516.pdf

In closing, I want to thank Mark Seager from Intel for his crucial role in 
founding OpenSFS in 2010 before his departure from Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory, Charlie Carroll from Cray for his effort and 
leadership as chairman of the board, and all former board members and 
their organizations for making this transition possible.

It has been an honor serving as the community board representative and I 
look forward to continued service as a member of the temporary OpenSFS 
board.

Sincerely,
Stephen Simms
OpenSFS Temporary Board Member

Manager, High Performance File Systems
Indiana University
ssimms at iu.edu
812-855-7211