Open Source Is the Key to
Cloud Computing
Yahya Tabesh
Introduction
In the 25 years since Richard Stallman wrote
the GNU General Public License, free and
open source software (FOSS) have become
pervasive in computing: Linux, Apache HTTP
Server, MySQL and more can be found in large
numbers of enterprises across the globe. And
open source is now increasingly undergirding
cloud computing as well.
Cloud OS
"Open source is certainly at the foundation in terms of
building out cloud technologies," says Byran Che,
senior director of product management at Red Hat and
responsible for its cloud operations offerings,
management software and Red Hat Enterprise MRG,
(Red Hat's Messaging, Real-time and Grid platform). "If
you take a look at market share in the server space, as
you look at traditional data centers, about 70 percent
are running on the Windows platform and about 30
percent are running Linux. As you take a look at what
operating systems people are choosing to build
Cloud OS
• The reasoning is simple, Che says: With a fresh
start, you get to build a whole new
architecture from the ground up, and open
source gives you the best value.
• "You can't get to the Amazon scale or the
Google scale and pay the license fees," he
says.
Cloud OS
• Cost isn't the only thing giving the open source model
an edge in the cloud space. Che also points to the
capability to create a community around a project and
thus drive rapid innovation.
• "That's what open source is really good at," he says.
"Amazon, Google, Facebook, all the people building
out all these cloud applications, infrastructure and
services, they're all doing it on open source. The fact
that they're using open source software is the only way
they can innovate at the pace they need to. They can't
wait for their vendors to go through the development
cycle."
SaaS
• But what exactly is open source doing in the
cloud? Stallman, for whom free software is
intensely political (he disdains the term open
source), claims that cloud computing—
specifically Software as a Service (SaaS)—
cannot be free by definition.
SaaS
• "SaaS and proprietary software lead to similar
harmful results, but the causal mechanisms
are different," Stallman wrote in an article
published by the Boston Review in 2010.
"With proprietary software, the cause is that
you have and use a copy which is difficult or
illegal to change. With SaaS, the cause is that
you use a copy you don't have."
SaaS
• "Many free software supporters assume that the
problem of SaaS will be solved by developing free
software for servers," he adds. "For the server
operator's sake, the programs on the server had
better be free; if they are proprietary, their
owners have power over the server. That's unfair
to the operator, and doesn't help you at all. But if
the programs on the server are free, that doesn't
protect you as the server's user from the effects
of SaaS. They give freedom to the operator, but
not to you."
FOOS
Stallman's contention has its roots in the
philosophical divide between free software
and open source software. The open source
movement, Stallman says, is a development
methodology with a practical focus on making
the source code available. The free software
movement, on the other hand, promotes an
ethical stance on how users should be able to
interact with their software.
FOSS
For Stallman, free software must provide users with four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program as you wish
The freedom to study and change the source code The freedom to redistribute exact copies
The freedom to redistribute copies of your modified versions
While the open source definition and the free software definition are nearly identical, they seem to come apart at the seams when it comes to cloud.
Open Cloud
• "Releasing the server software source code does
benefit the community: Suitably skilled users can
set up similar servers, perhaps changing the
software," Stallman wrote. "But none of these
servers would give you control over computing
you do on it, unless it's your server. The rest
would all be SaaS. SaaS always subjects you to
the power of the server operator, and the only
remedy is, Don't use SaaS!. Don't use someone
else's server to do your own computing on data
provided by you."
Open Cloud
• Meanwhile, the open source world is working
hardly across the cloud stack—Infrastructure
as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service
(PaaS), SaaS, Data Storage as a Service
(DaaS)—and in cloud management.
Open Cloud
Seven defining properties:
- It's open source. That's the foundation upon which you build. - It's based on collaborative development. There's got to be a viable, independent community around the project.
- It's based on open standards and open formats that are not tied into proprietary technology.
- It gives you the freedom to use your intellectual property.
- It gives users a choice of infrastructure. They get to choose their infrastructure provider and cloud provider.
- It has open APIs. "It's got to be pluggable and extensible - It has to be portable to other clouds. It can't lock you in to a
particular vendor.
Cloud Standards
Various standards for open source cloud are
Under development:
•
CloudFoundry runs on top of VMware's proprietary
vSphere virtualization software.
• The other major open-source alternative is OpenStack,
an open-source cloud platform built for NASA by
Rackspace, which combined its proprietary products
with NASA's previous development on a cloud system.
• Apache Deltacloud, a project initiated by Red Hat in
2009 and then contributed to the Apache Software
Foundation.
Cloud Standards
Standards bodies have also coalesced to create open and
interoperable standards. In 2009, leading standards development organizations (SDOs) to form Cloud Standards Coordination,
intended to coordinate the work of the various SDOs developing cloud standards.
Members include the Cloud Security Alliance, Cloud Standards
Customer Council, Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Open Grid Forum (OGF), Object Management Group (OMG), Open Cloud
Consortium (OCC), Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information and Standards (OASIS), Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), The Open Group, Association for Retail