[lustre-discuss] 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