Manos is helping to assemble a team of advisers, mostly from the end-user community, who will steer the group's research by highlighting common problems, particularly related to energy efficiency.

"We have been able to put together quite a team of industry heavyweights to get involved in this effort," he wrote in a . "Those announcements are forthcoming, and when they [are made], I think you will get a sense of the type of sea-change this effort could potentially have."

The group was founded by Dave Ohara, a former engineer with Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Microsoft who now runs the . He has with the University of Missouri, which will provide administrative support, and ARG Investment, which is building a data center in Missouri where it says it will test some of the new technologies proposed.

The project is in its early stages and questions remain about how it will operate. To be successful, open-source projects need "pretty widespread participation," said Joe Polastre, CTO of Sentilla, which makes tools for monitoring energy use in data centers.

"One of my biggest questions is what will motivate people to open up and share what they are doing," he said.