cw13 why cloud computing has to go the foss way by ahmed mekkawy
TRANSCRIPT
Why Cloud Computing has
to go the FOSS way
By: Ahmed Mekkawy
Founder | CTO – Spirula Systems
●Ahmed Mekkawy AKA linuxawy.
●Free Software Foundation (FSF) member.
●Egypt GNU/Linux Users Group (EGLUG) admin.
●ArabTechies member.
●Co-founder of OpenEgypt (under establishment).
●Independent consultant for MCIT.
●Founder | CTO of Spirula Systems.
About the Presenter
Freedom, openness, and
the cloud
Credit: Opensoft
The cloud
What is cloud?
●IaaS, PaaS, SaaS.
●Wait a minute.. we had these already!!
●"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that
we've redefined cloud computing to include everything
that we already do," he said. "The computer industry is
the only industry that is more fashion-driven than
women's fashion." RMS – Sep 2008
●The important in cloud is the “aaS” part.
As a Service?
●Agility.
●Flexibility.
●Customizability.
●Pay as you go.
●Don't mess with reliability, please.
How it all started?
CERN - 1993
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
Open Internet?
●The “Open Internet” is the Internet as we know it. It’s
open because it uses free, publicly available standards
that anyone can access and build to. www.fcc.gov
Sorry, I meant GNU - 1983
GNU
●The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project. Its
aim is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of
their computers and computing devices, by collaboratively
developing and providing software that is based on the following
freedom rights: users are free to run the software, share it (copy,
distribute), study it and modify it. GNU software guarantees these
freedom-rights legally (via its license), and is therefore free
software; the use of the word "free" always being taken to refer to
freedom. - Wikipedia
No really, it was IBM – 60's
IBM Virtualization
●The first stake in the ground was CP-40, an operating system
for the System/360 mainframe that IBM's Robert Creasy and
Les Comeau started developing in 1964 to create VMs within
the mainframe. It was quickly replaced by CP-67, the second
version of IBM's hypervisor. The early hypervisor gave each
mainframe user what was called a conversational monitor
system (CSM), essentially a single-user operating system.
What have we been doing?
●Some people say “everything is a game”. So let's see
what gamers say about it.
●Let's assume a multi-player strategy game, aimed for
building, not killing your enemies/competitors.
Games
●Start all alike
●Differentiate, innovate, be unpredictable some times.
●When the world is becoming mature, take the same
actions with your competitors.
What about innovation?
●You can innovate, just tell the others what is the good
things you are doing so you can all help each other (you
do want that to happen).
What's the relation?
●Mainframes + terminals.
●PCs, lots of them.
●Cloud, and mobility.
So, what about Software?
●Software was free/libre.
●An open letter to hobbyists.
●Proprietary software.
●Breaking free.
Innovation in FOSS?
●“The intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in
OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current
licensing model.” Microsoft - Halloween Document I
(1998)
Why Open Clouds?
Dell currently says:
As an introduction to the topic of open source cloud
computing I thought I would put out some common
reasons for why open source matters in cloud
computing:
●Customers want greater cloud choice/flexibilitywithout vendor lock-in
●Establish global, public/open cloud standards
●(Initial) pricing is lower with no licensing fees
●Open source provides cloud operators the ability to
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/cloud/w/wiki/3447.open-source-cloud-computing.aspx
Patents?
http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77139082&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch
OpenStack
●Started by NASA and Rackspace.
●Currently, collaboration for huge number of big
enterprises, the kind of guys which take such move for
their own benefit.
●Why? Simply none of them can do this alone, while
they all need it.
OpenStack – Cont'd
●“OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers
and cloud computing technologists producing the
ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for
public and private clouds.” OpenStack.org
OpenStack – Cont'd
●“Why open matters: All of the code for OpenStack is
freely available under the Apache 2.0 license. Anyone
can run it, build on it, or submit changes back to the
project. We strongly believe that an open development
model is the only way to foster badly-needed cloud
standards, remove the fear of proprietary lock-in for
cloud customers, and create a large ecosystem that
spans cloud providers.” OpenStack.org
User Perspective
●It's sad but true, but usually the user (especially if it's a
business not an individual) doesn't care about the used
technology, rather cares about features. Most of you
don't care that this is LibreOffice no M$-Office. You
only care about the content.
●Cloud is no different. Give me what I need, don't care
if it's a Xen or a KVM as long as it's working - except
when it comes to financials, capacity,etc.
User Perspective – Cont'd
●The good thing in cloud, is that the user is aware of his
need for freedom as well as flexibility.
●Especially vendor lock-in is hardly accepted by the
user. Interoperability is essential in the cloud world.
●Open Standards.
The Inevitable cloud
●"Somebody is saying this is inevitable, and whenever
you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a
set of businesses campaigning to make it true." RMS -
Sep 2008
●I don't have issues with that, as long as they are
making it true, the FOSS way.
The Inevitable
The inevitable Freedom
●Open Source Software.
●Open Standards.
●Open Internet.
●Open Hardware
●Open Data.
●In short, Users Freedom.
This presentation is made using 100% FLOSSLibreOffice - Cinnamon DE - Debian jessie GNU/Linux
These slides will be available on: http://www.slideshare.net/linuxawyhttp://www.spirulasystems.com
No Clouds have been hurt while preparing this presentation
Questions?
