[OpenAFS] Re: [OpenAFS-devel] An open letter from the OpenAFS Council of Elders

[Rodney M. Dyer]

At 06:50 PM 5/9/2008, Brian Sebby wrote:

>I think it would be a great idea to have some sort of membership option in
>an OpenAFS non-profit organization.  OpenAFS has been asking for donations,
>but unfortunately, Argonne and a number of other organizations (mostly
>government and academic) simply can't donate money without any benefit back
>to our organization.  We could contract with some of the folks providing
>AFS support if there was a feature we needed, but it's simply out of the
>question for us to be able to just donate to AFS.

Your "benefit back" is the continual improvement and debugging of 
OpenAFS.  You should have already contracted with either "Secure Endpoints" 
http://www.secure-endpoints.com, or "Sine Nomine" 
http://www.sinenomine.net/openafs/ for a "maintenance contract".  We have 
one, and it has served us well.  Since OpenAFS is essentially "free", the 
"maintenance contract" is more of a consulting contract really, but it 
serves the same function.  Talk to Jeffrey Altman about these arrangments 
at the workshop, or call him directly.  I'm sure he would be happy to work 
with you.

If you care about whether OpenAFS sees a future or not, then you NEED to do 
this.

Rodney

Rodney M. Dyer
Operations and Systems (Specialist)
Mosaic Computing Group
William States Lee College of Engineering
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Email: rmdyer(a)uncc.edu
Web: http://www.coe.uncc.edu/~rmdyer
Phone: (704)687-3518
Help Desk Line: (704)687-3150
FAX: (704)687-2352
Office:  Cameron Hall, Room 232