CROSS About

Citation

Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS), UC Santa Cruz. “About.” Web page, cross.ucsc.edu, last modified May 4, 2026. https://cross.ucsc.edu/about/. Read 2026-10-26.

Bottom line

CROSS started in 2015 with “a generous gift of $2,000,000 from alumnus Sage Weil”. It had three founding industry members: Toshiba America Electronic Components, SK Hynix Memory Solutions and Micron Technology.
It is a UC unit that companies fund as “Members of Industry & Government”. The page lists what industry, students and the campus each get.
The page gives no membership fee, no member rights in decisions and no current member list.

Background

Carlos Maltzahn founded CROSS. Sage Weil created the Ceph storage system “as part of his Ph.D. work at UC Santa Cruz”. See CROSS and CROSS homepage.

Key claims

Founding: “founded in 2015 by Carlos Maltzahn with a generous gift of $2,000,000 from alumnus Sage Weil and the founding memberships of Toshiba America Electronic Components, SK Hynix Memory Solutions, and Micron Technology.”
Leadership: “Faculty Director James Davis, Executive Director Stephanie Lieggi, and Associate Director Emily Lovell, with support of Event Coordinator Yelena Martynovskaya.”
Advice: a “CROSS Advisory Board consisting of UCSC-appointed open source software and entrepreneurship experts”: Tom Callaway, Doug Cutting, Nithya Ruff, Karen Sandler, Nissa Strottman and Sage Weil.
Three tasks: “Teach”, “Fund” (“high-impact research with plausible path to successful open source projects”) and “Incubate” (“developer communities around research prototypes”).
The model diagram: “Members of Industry & Government” and “UC Santa Cruz Faculty and Students” exchange “Talent, Projects, Technologies” through Education, Research and Incubator.
What industry gets: “Leverage open source software to create and shape new markets”; “Network with talent and potential recruits”; “Influence education, research, and the next generation OSS systems”.
What the campus gets: “Efficiently transfer technology”; “Attract and fund talented graduate students”.
“CROSS transfers cutting-edge technology resulting from academic-based research to industry via successful open source projects.”

Evidence and method

The center’s own page, in its own words. The advisory board is “UCSC-appointed”, so the campus, not the members, appoints the advisers.

Limits

No fees, budget, member count or member list after the founding three.
“Influence” is the only industry benefit in governance. The page does not say if members vote or have seats.
The founding facts are from 2015. The page does not say which members fund CROSS today.