[OpenAFS-announce] Foundation Creation Committee

[Roman Mitz]

This note is to announce that a new initiative has been started to
form an OpenAFS Foundation, and that a Creation Committee will work
toward completing this task within the next year.

First of all, we would like to acknowledge the past work on this
effort and thank the individuals who worked on creating a foundation.
While their efforts did not result in an actual foundation so far,
they have been pioneers in unknown territory and achieved repeated
community discussions, gathered vast amounts of information,
evangelized OpenAFS to garner industry support=97including some Fortune
500 companies=97and those are just the highlights.   On the behalf of
the community, we want to take this opportunity to thank Russ Allbery,
Jeff Altman, Derrick Brashear, Laura Stentz, and all previous Elders
for their tireless efforts.  While the extent of their contributions
may not be visible to all, the OpenAFS project would not be what it is
today without them.

It has been quite some time since an official communication occurred
by the Elders regarding the proposed setting up of a Foundation to
support OpenAFS.  Recently, there has been another wave of discussions
on the openafs-info list on the start of a foundation and related
topics, fueled by a lot of passion and the shared understanding that
OpenAFS can/could benefit from a non-profit foundation.  We believe
the flavor of a 501c3 non-profit organization, while hardest to get
awarded by the IRS, is the best fit for our needs.

For those unfamiliar with the nuts-and-bolts creation of a non-profit
foundation, here is a high-level description of the process, for which
we are pursuing a somewhat different overall strategy especially
catalyzed by Margarete Ziemer:

  * A name needs to be chosen.
  * The foundation needs to be incorporated.  Incorporation fee must
be paid. Depending on which state we incorporate in, which has certain
benefits and drawbacks, more or less upfront work is required.
  * A provisional Board of Directors needs to be established, to be
guiding the process of establishing the Mission, Vision, Bylaws, etc.
of the foundation.  This provisional BOD will be active until the
first successful elections have been completed, and at that point, the
leadership will be transferred to the official BOD.  In our case, the
Creation Committee will take that function (see below).
  * An application to be awarded non-profit status by the IRS (Form
1023) needs to be filed.   This requires submission of Bylaws, Mission
and Vision statements, which all have to be matching the IRS=92
requirements for non-profit organizations.  It takes between weeks and
years for the IRS to award the permanent non-profit status, but a
temporary one can be issued in the interim.
 * A bank account needs to be opened.
 * An independent accounting firm needs to be found.  This should be
reasonably-priced firm to oversee future tax returns and future
non-profit-status-related filings of forms with the IRS.
Alternatively, it could be some larger accounting firm willing to take
on the foundation pro-bono.
 * An independent law firm needs to be solicited to take on the
foundation.  Just like with an accounting firm, we should seek either
a reasonably-priced one or one with a big name and with a pro-bono
program, which would save the foundation a bundle.
 * Permissions to do business, on a state-by-state level, must be
filed with the IRS.
 * Permissions to do fundraising, state by state, must be filed with the IR=
S.
 * Permission to do advertising bulk mails should be obtained.
 * A foundation website needs to be created.

This list, while by no means complete, may serve as a mere indicator
of the complexity of the incorporation task, which sounds simple, yet
is anything but easy.  We will strive for completing the creation of
this Foundation and transition to the first BOD in less than one year.

With the support of the Elders, a new group (the Creation Committee)
has been formed to facilitate the creation of a Foundation.  As
mentioned above, this Creation Committee will take on the function of
a provisional BOD until the first properly elected board. The members,
of whom you can find bios at the end of this note, are: Derrick
Brashear, Todd DeSantis, Tom Keiser, Roman Mitz and Margarete Ziemer .
 The Creation Committee will transition leadership of the foundation
fully to the elected Board of Directors once it exists.

You can reach the Creation Committee with specific questions,
comments, or ideas at foundation@openafs.org. We are also creating a
community discussion list which anyone can join at
foundation-discuss@openafs.org.  Going forward, we pledge continuing
communication and we will be aiming for updates on at least a monthly
basis.

It is always difficult to re-kindle the excitement for a long-term
project, and to look at a long history with nothing but a keen eye on
learning for tomorrow.  Yet we are asking you to help us move OpenAFS
forward and give it the place, care, and appreciation it deserves in
general, beyond the current user and developer community.  We are
asking for, and counting on, your input in our moving toward our
mutual goal: to constructively protect, grow, and strengthen OpenAFS

Roman Mitz, on the behalf of the Creation Committee

----

E. Margarete Ziemer, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of Sine Nomine
Associates, a vendor-neutral research and engineering consultancy
dedicated to objectively identifying and implementing the best
solution for each client.  Dr. Ziemer, a resident of former East
Germany for twenty-five years, brings extensive international and
academic experience.  In addition to receiving three master=92s degrees
and winning prestigious scholarships by organizations such as the
World Council of Churches, the Fulbright Commission, and the American
Association of University Women, she earned a post-graduate degree at
the University of Jena, Germany, and a Ph.D. at Princeton.  Her proven
track record as a professional and community leader include the
founding of the International Students=92 Association at her alma mater
in Princeton, a Women=92s Leadership Group serving the Washington, DC,
metro area, mentoring in a program by Women in Technology in the
capitol, and a successful East Coast animal rescue.

----

Roman Mitz is the Senior Manager of the Systems Development group
inside Computing Services at Carnegie Mellon University.  His
experience with AFS started in 1996 as a user, 2003 as an
administrator, and he joined the OpenAFS Elders in 2010, where he is
currently the treasurer.

Roman received his BS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon while
working full-time as the lone IT administrator in the Center for the
Neural Basis of Cognition.  His lengthy experience at Carnegie Mellon
as an IT professional spans a variety of departments and roles; in
addition to those already mentioned, he was the Senior UNIX Systems
Administrator for Electrical and Computer Engineering, Senior Research
Systems Programmer for the Middleware team in Computing Services, and
Server Systems Manager/Acting IT Director for the Carnegie Mellon
Qatar Campus.  At the Qatar campus he was instrumental in the setup
and operation of its complex computing environment from its opening in
2004 to his return to the United States in 2007.

----

Thomas Keiser has, throughout the past eight years, been closely
involved with OpenAFS development and AFS3 protocol standardization.
During his tenure with Sine Nomine Associates, Thomas developed the
Demand Attach File Service, a technology that: 1) reduces file server
restart time by several orders of magnitude, 2) alleviates a
significant bottleneck intrinsic to the wire protocol, and 3) improves
the safety of file server metadata.  In addition, Thomas has been a
prominent contributor to the AFS3 protocol standardization process,
where he authored drafts related to: low-level wire protocol
primitives, historical documentation of the existing wire protocol, as
well as proposed new features requiring protocol modifications.

Thomas holds a bachelors of science in computer science from Penn
State University.  His research and publications primarily focus on
autonomous, distributed systems; distributed control; and sensor
networks.  While recently embarking on a new career as an Illumos
kernel engineer with Nexenta Systems, Inc., Thomas remains committed
to the theoretical first principles exemplified by the AFS3 protocol.
He believes that--notwithstanding twenty-five subsequent years of
technical innovation--the balance of management, interoperability,
cache consistency, and geographic distribution features, as uniquely
embodied in the AFS architecture, render AFS peerless.

----

Todd DeSantis is a Senior Systems Support Engineer for IBM
Corporation.  Todd has been working with AFS since he joined the
Transarc Corporation in 1993 as an AFS Support Representative.
Through the years Todd has expanded his role within the AFS Support
Team to include support, development and management of the technical
direction of the AFS Developers Team.  Todd and his Team support both
IBM AFS and OpenAFS platforms.  He joined the OpenAFS Elders in 2005.

----

Derrick Brashear has been involved with OpenAFS since its inception.
As a student at Carnegie Mellon in the 1990s, Derrick took an interest
in the distributed computing environment to which he had been newly
exposed, which led to the acquisition of a used Sun workstation that
led him down the path to his current role.

While working as a student, and then a staff member as a sysadmin and
programmer for the Computing Services Division of Carnegie Mellon
University, Derrick pushed IBM Corporation regarding pieces of AFS
technology which he felt were legally required to be distributed.
While these pieces were eventually distributed openly, IBM ultimately
chose to open source AFS completely, coincident with their end of life
announcement, and Derrick was one of the original organizers of the
OpenAFS organization, as well as an OpenAFS gatekeeper and a member of
the Council of Elders since the beginning.

Derrick has worked for Carnegie Mellon University, Sine Nomine
Associates, and Your File System Inc. providing OpenAFS support and
development among other responsibilities, and is currently employed at
Your File System, where he works on distributed data sharing
technology based on protocols that to this day are derived from the
original AFS3 implementation and principles dating back to the 1980s,
principles he believes are ahead of their time and still relevant to
modern data consumers. He seeks to continue to enhance this technology
in order to bring it to ever more users.