[openfabrics-ewg] Tomorrow's teleconference

Sun Oct 22 23:17:08 PDT 2006

Jeff,

Thank you for confirming there is an EWG call tomorrow and for putting the
SC06 Developer Summit o n  the agenda.

Also, thank you registering through the Acteva URL - you were the first to
register - thank you!!

Before the call tomorrow I thought it would be worthwhile re-stating some
ground rules or ways that the OpenFabrics Alliance has been working so far.
Of course the ways of working can and should be changed when there is
correctly level of consensus, If the change falls under the rules we, as
members of OFA, have agreed to follow (i.e Bylaws) then we need to conform
to the rules in order to keep OFA operating correctly

One rule is that the Board has to vote to approve a proposal from a member
for a software stack to become THE OpenFabrics software stack. Article 12 of
the Bylaws has detailed procedure, timing and 2/3rds vote of the Board that
is needed.

You'll remember some of us insisted that we follow the procedures for
setting up a Working Group leading up to Board approval for the EWG and the
branching of RC1 of OFED from the existing approved OpenFabrics stack at
that time.

Why am being a pain and bringing this up again?

OpenFabrics has to operate to the MUTUAL BENEFIT OF ITS MEMBERS - the vote
of a member's representative is how the member ensures its interests are
being met. AS a member of the Board (and a working group) we all understand
we should ensure that we make decisions and do work primarily for thr good
of our fellow members, our company's self interest comes second, and
non-members interest come after that. If we don't behave something like this
the Alliance will, over time, breakup. I think we have all seen the strength
in the market and with customers because we are working together for the
interest of our members (perhaps some more end-user customers will seriously
consider joining when they understand that membership is the tool for
working within the Alliance to get what they want - mutually that is).

I hope you understand the point of understanding this as a preamble to
tomorrow's discussion.

Some specific points to understand - 

1) the EWG was approved by the Board to take a branch from the OpenFabrics
trunk and "Enterprise- ready" it as much as possible, coordinate its
distribution with Novel and RedHat, and figure out collaborative support
processes so Enterpise customers have the temerity to use it, hopefully in
production.

2)The Board did not approve OFED to become the trunk at any time. The Board
could approve that but they haven't yet. If the EWG believes that the right
steps going forward the EWG has to propose in a manner conforming to Article
12. (BTW this belies the notion that OFA is a developers free for all where
anyone can work on what they want and commit it to the trunk)

3) The DOE PathForward development team comprised the bulk of the
development resources that got the OF stack to the point where the EWG could
branch for OFED 1.x. And the DOE PathForward has gone on funding development
after that, and will continue for several more months or years. The code
developed has been committed into the OF trunk. The three major DOE Weapons
Labs are members, they have provide funding, as Board members that must
carry some weight in our discussions.

Attached you will find a feature list prepared by the PF team last week from
their perspective as input to the creation of the agenda for the Summit.

4) As OFED has evolved with patches, fixes and features, these need to be
committed the OF trunk and maintained in the trunk so that the next branch
from the OF trunk for OFED does not regress too badly, and contains the
features for the trunk that have been developed and committed by developers
to the trunk that are not yet in OFED.

5) On the HSIR Financial call we heard an enterprise customer say that not
all what is good for HPC is good for the Enterprise - and obviously the
converse is also true. That comment was followed by the suggestion that the
financial folk should become members to have more influence over what
development work is done going forward - that didn't seem to be a suggestion
that has achieved much currency yet! Let's hope it will before too long!.

My apologies for such a long note, but as we negotiate the agenda for the
Developer Summit these are factors we should all understand and weigh in our
thinking and expressions of opinion/recommendations to our fellow members
and other participants in the call.

We had several discussion back in Feb-march to get EWG and OFED up and
running  and those who have worked on it have done great things. I'm swure
we'll have several discussions over the next few weeks about how to move the
trunk and the OFED branch forward for both the Enterprise and HPC - and it
will work out well in the end because of the talent, understanding and good
will of those working together on it for the membership as a whole. 

Bill.

Bill Boas
VP, Business Development | System Fabric Works
bboas at systemfabricworks.com | 510-375-8840

-----Original Message-----
From: openfabrics-ewg-bounces at openib.org
[mailto:openfabrics-ewg-bounces at openib.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Squyres
Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2006 9:00 AM
To: Open Fabrics
Subject: [openfabrics-ewg] Tomorrow's teleconference

Sorry for the short notice of this, but hopefully everyone has the  
time blocked out on their calendar already.

OFED Bi-weekly teleconference
Date:           23 Oct 2006
Time:           Noon US Eastern, 9am US Pacific, 6pm Israel
Topic:          SC06 OFA meeting agenda
Phone Numbers:  US/Canada:      +1.866.432.9903
                 India:          +91.80.4103.3979
                 Israel:         +972.9.892.7026
                 Other numbers:   http://cisco.com/en/US/about/ 
doing_business/conferencing/index.html

Bill Boas passed around a strawman agenda about a week ago, and there  
have been some on-list and off-list mails discussing it.  There does  
not seem to be consensus yet, so the call tomorrow seems like a  
perfect opportunity to discuss.

-- 
Jeff Squyres
Server Virtualization Business Unit
Cisco Systems

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