SOSP started in 1967 with less than 20 people and has grown to a record 800 in 2017. Similarly, OSDI, which was started in 1994 as an alternative venue for the community to meet and publish work when SOSP is not held, has grown from 200 attendees to more than 600. As a result, there are now hundreds of researchers regularly attending top systems conferences every year.

The number of submitted papers has grown accordingly, roughly tripling between OSDI 1999 and OSDI 2018, reflecting the growth in top-tier systems research groups around the world. The scope of systems research has also grown: new topics -- most recently, verification and machine learning -- have seen major growth in interest.

Despite this growth, we continue to have a single top-tier conference per year, accepting fewer than 50 papers. SOSP has never accepted more than 40 papers, which is roughly double the number of accepted papers at the first SOSP in 1967 (17 papers were presented at the first SOSP). The acceptance rate at SOSP 2019 is a dismal 13.7% with only 38 papers. Regardless of acceptance rates, we firmly believe that there are more than 40 worthwhile projects to highlight in the systems area every year.  

Having a single annual conference has a number of second-order negative effects:
    - The level of randomness in the review process means that many worthwhile papers are rejected prior to ultimate acceptance, challenging our ability for timely dissemination of results
    - The increased competition for presentation slots makes it more challenging to publish “implementation” papers, even though these often have lasting influence
    - Many papers are instead resubmitted to other systems venues or domain-specific conferences, leading to increased workloads for both authors and reviewers for these conferences
    - It’s a challenge to host the conference in locations that are geographically inclusive for members of the systems community -- currently, only one conference in 6 years is held outside North America (either Europe or Asia)

Some, though not all, of these problems could be addressed by increasing the number of papers at each conference. However, the realities of scheduling mean accepting much more than the current number of papers would require moving to a multi-track format or presenting only a subset of accepted papers, both options that organizers and attendees alike have repeatedly resisted.

As an alternative, we propose holding both SOSP and OSDI annually, instead of in alternating years.  We aren’t proposing a precise schedule — it depends on various factors, including the timing of other conferences and deadlines — but the two should be roughly 6 months apart.

Holding both SOSP and OSDI annually will have the following benefits:
    - OSDI can be held in the US, ensuring that there will always be an annual systems conference in the US in those years that SOSP is located outside of North America.
    - It will ensure a reasonable number of papers are accepted every year in systems and will double the number of papers published every year
    - It will offer the option for OSDI to differentiate itself from SOSP by providing room for publishing excellent practical systems research (which today has to be accepted at the cost of rejecting more theoretical work).

Many other research areas have two top-tier conferences annually (e.g., SIGMOD/VLDB, MICRO/ISCA, POPL/PLDI, SIGCOMM/NSDI), and we believe that the systems community deserves the same.

Signed,
Tom Anderson, University of Washington
Dan Ports, Microsoft Research and University of Washington
Irene Zhang, Microsoft Research and University of Washington
Adam Belay, MIT
Simon Peter, UT Austin
Vijay Chidambaram, UT Austin
Ricardo Bianchini, Microsoft Research
Natacha Crooks, UC Berkeley
Pratyush Patel, University of Washington
Pradeep Ambati, UMass Amherst
Samantha Miller, University of Washington
Jialin Li, National University of Singapore
Adithya Abraham Philip, Carnegie Mellon University
Niel Lebeck, University of Washington
Ashlie Martinez, University of Washington
Tapan Chugh, University of Washington
Jialin Li, University of Washington
Henry Schuh, University of Washington
Wen Zhang, UC Berkeley
Sudheesh Singanamalla, University of Washington
Aurojit Panda, NYU
Adriana Szekeres, University of Washington
Yotam Harchol, EPFL
Katie Lim, University of Washington
Kevin Zhao, University of Washington
Murat Demirbas , University at Buffalo SUNY
Pramod Bhatotia, University of Edinburgh
Emery Berger, UMass Amherst
Showan Esmail Asyabi, Boston University
Heather Miller, Carnegie Mellon University
Anirudh Badam, Microsoft
Vaggelis Atlidakis, Columbia University
Lily Stephenson, Microsoft Research
Anil Madhavapeddy, University of Cambridge
Dan Tsafrir, Technion
Mosharaf Chowdhury, University of Michigan
Landon Cox, Microsoft Research
Fred Douglis, Perspecta Labs
Junjie Shen, University of California, Irvine
Emad Heydari Beni, KU Leuven
Kevin Negy, Cornell University
Ellis Michael, University of Washington
Gagan Somashekar, Stony Brook University
Baris Kasikci, University of Michigan
Kostis Kaffes, Stanford University
Jungyeon Yoon, Georgia Tech
Sujin Park, Georgia Institute of Technology
Cláudia Brito, University of Minho
Asaf Cidon, Columbia University
Gohar Irfan Chaudhry, Microsoft Research
Kai Mast, Cornell
Vivian Fang, UC Berkeley
Christina Delimitrou, Cornell University
Yehia Elkhatib, Lancaster University
Ting Dai, IBM Research
Michio Honda, University of Edinburgh
Shadi Noghabi, Microsoft Research
Peter Honeyman, University of Michigan
Yiying Zhang, University of California, San Diego
Anwar Hithnawi, UC Berkeley
Hasan Al Maruf, University of Michigan
Robert Ricci, University of Utah
Matthew Burke, Cornell University
Prateek Sharma, Indiana University
Raymond Cheng, UC Berkeley
James Mickens, Harvard University
Nathan Beckmann, Carnegie Mellon University
Lef Ioannidis, MIT
Sameh Elnikety, Microsoft Research
Syed Akbar Mehdi, UT Austin
Jan Vitek, Northeastern University
Jayashree Mohan, UT Austin
Anastasios Papagiannis, University of Crete
Ryan Huang, Johns Hopkins University
Amogha Suresh, Stony Brook University
Mainak Ghosh, Twitter
Akshay Narayan, MIT
Dayeol Lee, UC Berkeley
Deian Stefan, UCSD
Erich Nahum, IBM Research
Soujanya Ponnapalli, UT Austin
Brad Campbell, University of Virginia
Yizhou Shan, University of California, San Diego
Basavesh Shivakumar, Purdue University
Jonathan Behrens, MIT
Yoav Etsion, Technion
Apoorve Mohan, Northeastern University
Frank Dabek, Google
Jeff Rasley, Microsoft
Alana Marzoev, MIT
Aakash Sharma, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway
Brandon Lucia, Carnegie Mellon University
Erez Zadok, Stony Brook University
Enis Ceyhun Alp, EPFL
Srinath Setty, Microsoft Research
Ryan Stutsman, University of Utah
Daniel Bittman, UC Santa Cruz
Gokhan Kul, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Hari Balakrishnan, MIT
Alexey Tumanov, Georgia Tech
Kapil Arya, Microsoft Research
Boon Thau Loo, University of Pennsylvania
Jayneel Gandhi, VMware Research
Devesh Tiwari, Northeastern University
Ricardo Macedo, University of Minho
Carlos Maltzahn, UC Santa Cruz
Theodoros Michailidis, UC San Diego
Ben Zhao, University of Chicago
Don Porter, UNC Chapel Hill
Shivaram Venkataraman, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Iman Tabrizian, University of Toronto
Xin Jin, Johns Hopkins University
Mike Freedman, Princeton University
Marco Serafini, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Juncheng Yang, Carnegie Mellon University
Han Wang, Intel
Vinay Banakar, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Xiangfeng Zhu, University of Michigan
Rodrigo Fonseca, Brown University
Raluca Ada Popa, UC Berkeley
Madan Musuvathi, Microsoft Research
Tim Wood, George Washington University
Sudarsun Kannan, Rutgers University
Scott Shenker, UC Berkeley
Huaicheng Li, University of Chicago
Jeffrey Lukman, University of Chicago
Gustavo Sandoval, New York University
Chia-Che Tsai, Texas A&M University
Xing Lin, NetApp
Thomas Wenisch, University of Michigan
Zhenqing Hu, Northwestern University
Guna Prasaad, University of Washington
Aasheesh Kolli, Penn State
Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, VMware Research and UC Irvine
Aditya Kusupati, University of Washington
Lequn Chen, University of Washington
Vasileios Kemerlis, Brown University
Jian Huang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ammar Ahmad Awan, Ohio State University
Jared Roesch, University of Washington
Bryan Ford, EPFL
Lucas Villa Real, IBM Research
Alan Zaoxing Liu, Carnegie Mellon University
Avani Wildani, Emory University
Vitor Enes, University of Minho
Danyang Zhuo, Duke University
Prashant Shenoy, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Kunlin Yang, University of California, San Diego
Arjun Singhvi, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Arsany Guirguis, EPFL
Huaizheng Zhang, Nanyang Technological University
Michael Swift, University of Wisconsin--Madison
Li Chen, Tencent
Johan Tordsson, Umeå University
Zachary Newman, MIT
Dr. Felipe Huici, NEC Labs Europe
Ramon Bertran, IBM Research
Isaac Sheff, MPI-SWS
Dan Williams, IBM Research
Doug Woos, Brown University
Subho Banerjee, University of Illinois
Wyatt Lloyd, Princeton University
Amit Levy, Princeton University
Han Zhenhua, The University of Hong Kong
Amogh Akshintala, UNC Chapel Hill
Lillian Tsai, MIT
Ahmed Ali-Eldin, UMass Amherst
Ricardo Koller, IBM Research
Ethan Miller, University of California, Santa Cruz
Haryadi Gunawi, University of Chicago
Swapnil Gandhi, IISc
Wenting Zheng, UC Berkeley
Manohar Vanga, MPI-SWS
Firas Abuzaid, Stanford University
Sharan Santhanam, NEC Laboratories Europe
Meng Wang, University of Chicago
Rick Stevens, University of Chicago
Junchen Jiang, University of Chicago
Haichen Shen, Amazon
Justine Sherry, Carnegie Mellon University
Faria Kalim, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
Ioan Raicu, Illinois Institute of Technology
Lalith Suresh, VMware Research
Ahsan Pervaiz, University of Chicago
Samer Al-Kiswany, University of Waterloo
Soubhik Deb, University of Washington
Trevor Brown, University of Waterloo
Daniar Kurniawan, University of Chicago
Shruti Gandhi, North Carolina State University
Deepti Raghavan, Stanford
Darrell Long, University of California, Santa Cruz
Twinkle Jain, Northeastern University
Peter Kraft, Stanford University
Alexander Conway, Rutgers University
Midhul Vuppalapati, Cornell University
Shivam Bharuka, Facebook
Andrew Moore, Cambridge University
Zili Meng, Tsinghua University
Geoffrey Hinton, University of Toronto
Mania Abdi, Northeastern University
Eric Rozner, University of Colorado Boulder
Vasiliki Kalavri, Boston University
Tanvir Ahmed Khan, University of Michigan
YY Zhou, UCSD
Muhammad Shahbaz, Stanford University
Huaien Zhang, Fudan University
Sam H. Noh UNIST
Myoungsoo Jung, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Changwoo Min, Virginia Tech
Mohannad Ismail, Virginia Tech
Yuan-Hao Chang, Academia Sinica
Marco Guazzone, University of Piemonte Orientale
Jongse Park, KAIST
Mia Primorac, EPFL
Madhava Krishnan, Virginia Tech
Wonseok Shin, Virginia Tech
Changwoo Min, Virginia Tech
Jiacong He, Futurewei
Seungyeop Han, Rubrik
Byung-Gon Chun, Seoul National University
Yeongjin Jang, Oregon State University
Anand Iyer, UC Berkeley
Xiang Chen, Chinese Academics of Science
Iacovos G. Kolokasis, University of Crete
Tao Zhang, UNC Chapel Hill
Qizhen Zhang, University of Pennsylvania
Rohan Padhye, UC Berkeley
Yue Cheng, George Mason University
Sumit Kumar Monga, Virginia Tech
Soham Sankaran, Cornell
Anand Iyer, UC Berkeley
Lele Ma, College of William & Mary
Tianyin Xu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Thomas Davidson, MPI-SWS
Jianfeng Wang, University of Southern California
Sara Hamouda, INRIA
Daniel Crankshaw, Microsoft Research
Ibrahim Umit Akgun, Stony Brook University
Seyyed Ahmad Javadi, University of Cambridge
Helen Oliver, The Alan Turing Institute/University of Cambridge
Evangelia Kalyvianaki, University of Cambridge
Poonam Yadav, University of York, UK
John Ousterhout, Stanford University
Youjip Won, KAIST
Peter Pietzuch, Imperial College London
Simon Kuenzer, NEC Labs Europe
Rajrup Ghosh, University of Southern California
Ivan Beschastnikh, University of British Columbia
Eiko Yoneki, University of Cambridge
Sebastian Angel, University of Pennsylvania
Saurabh Bagchi, Purdue University
Daniel S. Berger, Carnegie Mellon University
Miguel Correia, INESC-ID / IST / Univ. Lisboa
Rodrigo Bruno, ETH Zurich
Zeke Wang, Zhejiang University
Luis Pedrosa, INESC-ID / IST - University of Lisbon
David Cock, ETH Zurich
Michael Giardino, ETH Zürich
Xiaosong Ma, Qatar Computing Research Institute
Reto Achermann, ETH Zurich
Lianmin Zheng, UC Berkeley
Mohamed Alzayat, MPI-SWS
Vasily Tarasov, IBM Research
Pulkit Misra, Microsoft Research
Zhaoning Kong, University of California, Los Angeles
Supreeth Shastri, University of Texas at Austin
Emmett Witchel, University of Texas at Austin
Geoff Kuenning, Harvey Mudd College
Antonios Katsarakis, University of Edinburgh

Add your name below. For any questions or comments, contact Tom Anderson, Dan Ports or Irene Zhang. A FAQ summarizing community discussions can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1heesMW22B9TH9N8wQuo3Ueq8iTpE-9MwLeELuW2bOb8/edit?usp=sharing