Following our OSL Future post, the community response has been incredible! Thanks to your amazing support, our team is funded for the next year. This is a huge relief and lets us focus on building a truly self-sustaining OSL.

To get there, we’re tackling two big interconnected goals:

1. Finding a new, cost-effective physical home for our core infrastructure, ideally with more modern hardware.
2. Securing multi-year funding commitments to cover all our operations, including potential new infrastructure costs and hardware refreshes.

Pillar 1: The Data Center & Hardware Challenge

Our current data center is over 20 years old and needs to be replaced soon. With Oregon State University evaluating the future of this facility, it’s very likely we’ll need to relocate in the near future. While migrating to the State of Oregon’s data center is one option, it comes with significant new costs. This makes finding free or very low-cost hosting (ideally between Eugene and Portland for ~13-20 racks) a huge opportunity for our long-term sustainability. More power-efficient hardware would also help us shrink our footprint.

Speaking of hardware, refreshing some of our older gear during a move would be a game-changer. We don’t need brand new, but even a few-generations-old refurbished systems would boost performance and efficiency. (Huge thanks to the Yocto Project and Intel for a recent hardware donation that showed just how impactful this is!) The dream? A data center partner donating space and cycled-out hardware.

Our overall infrastructure strategy is flexible. We’re enhancing our OpenStack/Ceph platforms and exploring public cloud credits and other donated compute capacity. But whatever the resource, it needs to fit our goals and come with multi-year commitments for stability. And, a physical space still offers unique value, especially the invaluable hands-on data center experience for our students.

Pillar 2: Building Lasting Financial Resilience

The recent support was amazing for our immediate team needs. But for the OSL to thrive long-term, we need a sustainable financial foundation. This is crucial, as the university expects units like ours to become self-sufficient beyond this current year.

So, our big focus this next year is locking in ongoing support – think annualized pledges, different kinds of regular income, and other recurring help. This is vital, especially with potential new data center costs and hardware needs. Getting this right means we can stop worrying about short-term funding and plan for the future: investing in our tech and people, growing our awesome student programs, and serving the FOSS community. We’re looking for partners, big and small, who get why foundational open source infrastructure matters and want to help us build this sustainable future together.

An Evolving OSL: Still Critical, Still Growing

The OSL is actively evolving to meet new FOSS needs:

• POWER and ARM (aarch64) OpenStack clusters with IBM and Ampere Computing.
• Expanded x86 OpenStack and a robust Ceph cluster (now with S3 storage used by projects like OpenVox).
• GitLab CI runners across all architectures, with plans for GitHub Actions and more.
• Managed hosting for projects like PostmarketOS, including their recent GitLab migration.

Yes, the OSL is absolutely still needed! A cost-effective new data center, refreshed hardware, and stable funding are key to our mission.

How You Can Help Build Our Self-Sustaining Future

We need your help with these two pillars:

1. Finding Our New, Cost-Effective Data Center Home & Hardware:
   • Leads on Free/Low-Cost Space: Know of data center capacity (~13-20 racks) between Eugene and Portland?
   • Hardware Donations/Leads: Can your org donate retired servers? Know data centers or refurbishers who might help?
   • Connections & Spreading the Word: Introduce us to decision-makers and share our need!
2. Securing Multi-Year Funding:
   • Corporate Partnerships: Consider a multi-year sponsorship, especially if your company benefits from open source.
   • Introductions & Advocacy: Connect us with CSR/OSPO contacts and champion sustainable funding for foundational infra.

Reach out to donations@osuosl.org for any discussions on these fronts.

Our Vision: Unlocked by Smart Solutions

With a secure, cost-effective data center (and updated hardware!) plus predictable multi-year funding, we can:

• Expand our student program.
• Broaden managed services for projects (GitLab, Discourse, Matrix, etc.).
• Introduce modern tooling like Terraform and Kubernetes for learning and efficiency.
• Engage more community volunteers.

Finding economical solutions is key to making this vision a reality.

Join Us in Building OSL’s Next Chapter

The recent encouragement has been fantastic. Now, help us build a truly sustainable foundation. Securing a cost-effective data center and robust multi-year financial partnerships are the critical next steps for the OSL’s future.

Thank you for your continued belief in the OSL!