[Lustre-devel] International Lustre Foundation

[Peter J. Braam]

Dear Lustre Developers & Users,

 It is with great pleasure that we write to tell you that the High
Performance Cluster File Systems Software Foundation (HPCFS Software
Foundation) has been incorporated in the United States. Oracle is being
invited to become a member of the Foundation and to grant the originating
foundation permission to do business as the “Lustre Foundation”.

HPCFS is also creating a UK affiliate foundation in order to have a
non-profit affiliate in the European Union.

The originating US foundation, by collaboration amongst all future members,
is set up to provide the forum for sharing requirements, experience with
deployment and use, education and training, a single integrated software
repository and development tree, quality assurance and testing
infrastructure, and a single point of worldwide approved software release
and documentation distribution for the GPL Lustre File System, as does the
Open Fabrics Alliance (OFA) for its OFED software.

The OFA has enabled the vendor and customer communities to collaborate in
evolving the interconnect software for HPC from a highly fragmented to a
unified software approach.  We have every reason to believe that HPCFS will
have a similar successful trajectory as the IP, patent and collaborative
working and voting relationships that work in OFA have been replicated in
the originating foundation bylaws. Initiation and annual dues are intended
to be modest ($10,000 and less), After the first year, Board members will be
elected by the members annually.

The foundation does not intend to deliver development or support services
itself, to avoid competition with established vendors that perform these
services as part of their business operations.  Instead, it will be a forum
for collaboration among such vendors and the Lustre user community.

The HPCFS was formed as a result of the discussions initiated in by Prof.
Thomas Lippert in Juelich concerning the availability of Open Lustre
Support. An initial approach to the formation of a Lustre Foundation was
presented there. Since then the foundation initiative has received
overwhelmingly positive reactions from many government and industrial
organizations, including support from Lustre leadership at Oracle Inc, who
is the copyright holder of the Lustre code and the owner of the trademark.

After much discussion with Oracle and many others, and leveraging the OFA
experience, the foundation has been incorporated and it will apply for IRS
501(c) 3 tax exemption for its activities/operations.

There are two ways the originating foundation can work internationally:-

  1) The originating foundation can accept memberships from vendors,
government, academic institutions and individuals living and working
anywhere in the world, or

  2) The foundation is also set up to work with affiliate member foundations
in other countries or regions, which can be formed to represent their
interest and collectively inter-operate with the originating foundation.
 Each affiliate can work with any entity in their locality to achieve its
own self interest as well as participate in the originating foundation.

We are inviting you to become an early member of the Foundation by filling
out and returning the attached Memorandum of Intent.

During the coming months this initial Board of Directors, together with Bill
Boas who intends to act as Acting-Executive Director, will finalize the
bylaws and will form Working Groups in charge of collaboratively setting up
and managing the Foundations work.

Examples of the functions of such working groups might be - Requirements,
File Systems Architecture, Engineering, Testing and Quality Assurance, Bug
Tracking and Sustaining Engineering, Marketing and Promotion, Documentation
and Discussion, Education and Training.

The Board will be searching for and recruiting volunteers from members who
agree to chair, contribute and participate in these working groups. We
anticipate coming together in Europe in early September and intend to have a
full face-to-face meeting of the members in the SC10 timeframe in New
Orleans in mid November.

We look forward to working with you. Please complete and return the
memorandum of intent indicating your interest in joining, contributing and
participating in the Foundation.

Thank you,

 Regards,

Bill Boas

Peter Braam
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