[Ofa_boardplus] Voteable item for Thursday's Board Meeting

[Bernard Metzler]

All,
I have to admit I did not actively contribute to the mission statement
discussion for some time. But let me share with you what I think when I
just read the proposed new mission statement.

It would reflect quite a big change of the mission of the OFA. To me, old
keywords were

   open source software development, test, licensing, support
   vendor independence
   unified, cross-platform, transport-independent software stack for RDMA
   standards-based software

So, to my understanding, the current mission of the OFA is to develop and
maintain an ecosystem to ease and promote the usage of RDMA fabrics, while
closely following given standards.

Here are my main concerns with the proposed new mission statement:

   It  completely lacks the term 'open source software', which was
   essential for the success of OFA so far.
   Vendor independence got dropped, transport (fabric) independence as
   well.
    Positioning OFA as a standardization body ("creating industry standard
   specifications"). That shall be out of scope of OFA.
   "accelerate the development ... of advanced networks" - OFA shall not,
   and cannot develop new networks, except social ;)
   "incubating new software technologies" - what is this about? What is an
   example new software technology which gets incubated in OFA?


In a nutshell, it would move the role of OFA from an enabler of technology
to a creator and promoter of technology. Of course, the mission statement
shall not preclude the adoption of new technologies, best under the
umbrella of vendor and transport independence, but its development and
promotion shall be outside the scope of OFA.

Looking forward to talk to you tomorrow,

Bernard.



---
Bernard Metzler, PhD
Tech. Leader High Performance I/O, Principal Research Staff
IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
Saeumerstrasse 4
CH-8803 Rueschlikon, Switzerland
+41 44 724 8605



From:	Paul Grun <grun at cray.com>
To:	"ofa_boardplus at lists.openfabrics.org, "
            <ofa_boardplus at lists.openfabrics.org>
Date:	03/13/2018 00:58
Subject:	[Ofa_boardplus] Voteable item for Thursday's Board Meeting
Sent by:	"Ofa_boardplus" <ofa_boardplus-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org>



      The ‘mission project’ has nearly reached its end – the attached is
      the result of many moons’ worth of work conducted in the XWG.
      Note that there remain several important points that should be
      discussed in the context of the Board – see Slide 5
      Cray will welcome some wordsmithing on Slide 3 during the meeting
      before this is offered as an official motion on Thursday.  The idea
      is to get the motion as close to consensus as possible before making
      an official motion in order to avoid the overhead of capturing a
      bunch of friendly amendments.

Regards,
-Paul

Advanced Technology Group
Cray, Inc.
Office  – (503) 620 – 8757
Mobile – (503) 703 - 5382
 [attachment "V_Mission_2018_0312.pptx" deleted by Bernard
Metzler/Zurich/IBM]
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