Which Cloud System Is the Most Open?

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Which Cloud System Is the Most Open?

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @10:05AM from the does-a-silver-lining-need-gaps-to-be-open dept.

1sockchuck writes "In a landscape with dueling open clouds, which is the most open? Cloud software specialist Eucalyptus sees pushing boundaries of openness as an opportunity. 'We're extending our open model into professional services,' said CEO Marten Mickos. 'Anyone can look at the source code, training material, documents that go around the code, everything. We realize that our competitors will look at it, but we're happy to offer it to the world in order to better the product.' The open cloud arena is becoming more competitive with the growth of OpenStack, CloudStack and OpenNebula, 'There are a number of reasons we are making this shift, but the most important one is culture,' Eucalyptus said in a blog post. 'If we truly are an open source company, does it make sense for us to develop closed-source intellectual property, tightly control access to that information, and use it primarily as a way to drive direct business unit revenue?' What lies ahead in the Open Cloud Wars?"

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Goatse Cloud by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:10 · Score: 0

The goatse system is certainly the winner here.
1. Re:Goatse Cloud by vlm · 2013-02-12 10:29 · Score: 1
  
  2G1C
  2 girls 1 cloud
  Pretty much works out the same way as any other fad.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
2. Re:Goatse Cloud by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:44 · Score: 0
  
  fuck off ...
3. Re:Goatse Cloud by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 11:16 · Score: 0
  
  It needed some built-in cloud redundancy, I had to look for it last time I needed to goatse someone.
Re:Not Them by gishzida · 2013-02-12 10:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

Oh the irony here... um... why does Win8 want to have you login to the "Microsoft Cloud" to authenticate you?
BING-Doh! You have just been monetized.
In the cloud by buchner.johannes · 2013-02-12 10:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

you pay for the service. So it doesn't matter if someone 'steals' your code, as long as you can provide a better service. And by better I mostly mean reliable.

--
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Re:Not Them by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:14 · Score: 3, Funny

Microsoft has proven to be a trustworthy company since the 70s.
Out the window.... by kawabago · 2013-02-12 10:15 · Score: 2

some unclaimed clouds are floating by right now!
1. Re:Out the window.... by CannonballHead · 2013-02-12 10:56 · Score: 1
  
  is that legal? there's no government oversight for where the cloud is going? are they getting offshored? are we losing our clouds to foreign countries?
For what purpose? by bananaquackmoo · 2013-02-12 10:17 · Score: 2

There's lots of cloud systems out there serving different purposes. Without the purpose defined this question is useless.
Re:Not Them by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:18 · Score: 0

Ned? Ned Ryerson?
I'm insulted by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:22 · Score: 3, Funny

With slashdot's 15+ year history, coming here and reading trolls this transparently bad is frankly an insult. Whoever wrote this should be ashamed. Is this your very first troll? Did you just discover this site and say "hey this looks easy, I'm not even going to try"? Please.
1. Re:I'm insulted by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:27 · Score: 1
  
  Typical slashdot - classify anything against groupthink as troll with no explanation.
2. Re:I'm insulted by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 11:40 · Score: 0
  
  Very true.
3. Re:I'm insulted by eugene_roux · 2013-02-12 23:28 · Score: 1
  
  With slashdot's 15+ year history, coming here and reading trolls this transparently bad is frankly an insult. Whoever wrote this should be ashamed. Is this your very first troll? Did you just discover this site and say "hey this looks easy, I'm not even going to try"? Please.
  
  Typical slashdot - classify anything against groupthink as troll with no explanation.
  Now see guys, this is how you troll...
  
  --
  Part Time Philosopher, Oft Times Romantic, Full Time Unix Geek
Re:Not Them by gmuslera · 2013-02-12 10:27 · Score: 1

That looks a lot like jumping from the frying pan into the volcano. Yes, there is heat in both, and yes, once you fell into the latter, won't be anything left on you to be able to look back.
OwnCloud by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

Your OwnCloud is.
http://owncloud.org/
-americamatrix
1. Re:OwnCloud by johnsnails · 2013-02-12 13:30 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed! http://owncloud.org/
2. Re:OwnCloud by tolan-b · 2013-02-13 01:21 · Score: 1
  
  OwnCloud is great, now that it works a bit better, but it's got nothing to do with the topic of the article.
3. Re:OwnCloud by cyb3rkn19ht · 2013-02-13 05:23 · Score: 1
  
  That is a amazing Cloud application. Thank you for sharing.
Re:Not Them by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:27 · Score: 0

I uninstalled Ubuntu and loaded Windows 8 and never looked back.

"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full." - Matthew 6:2
You sir, have received your reward in full. Enjoy it.
Re:Not Them by spire3661 · 2013-02-12 10:27 · Score: 1

10 days after GH Day is too soon. Come back and try it in April. For the months of Feb and March go with Chandler Bing jokes.

--
Good-bye
Doesn't matter... by Darkness404 · 2013-02-12 10:32 · Score: 1, Offtopic

It doesn't matter how "open" the cloud is. If you don't hold it, you don't own it. You can only make educated guesses as to what the future will hold for that company and your data.

For example, just look at MegaUpload. If you stored stuff in "the cloud" using it, its now gone for good. Prior to January 2012, there was no indication that it would become unusable, no warning to back up files or anything.

--
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
1. Re:Doesn't matter... by masternerdguy · 2013-02-12 10:36 · Score: 1
  
  It seemed to me there was tons of warning if you read the news: MPAA/RIAA had it out for them for months before they got shut down. I predicted their eventual demise months in advance and nobody believed me.
  
  --
  To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
2. Re:Doesn't matter... by hawguy · 2013-02-12 10:37 · Score: 2
  
  It doesn't matter how "open" the cloud is. If you don't hold it, you don't own it. You can only make educated guesses as to what the future will hold for that company and your data.
  For example, just look at MegaUpload. If you stored stuff in "the cloud" using it, its now gone for good. Prior to January 2012, there was no indication that it would become unusable, no warning to back up files or anything.
  I think the point of an "open" cloud is that you can pick up your code and data and move somewhere else without any problem. Amazon offers a lot of great functionality with their cloud environment and a rich API to control it, but any company that takes advantage of it is screwed if Amazon prices them out or decides they don't want to be in the cloud provider business anymore.
3. Re:Doesn't matter... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-13 03:06 · Score: 0
  
  I think the point of an "open" cloud is that you can pick up your code and data and move somewhere else without any problem. Amazon offers a lot of great functionality with their cloud environment and a rich API to control it, but any company that takes advantage of it is screwed if Amazon prices them out or decides they don't want to be in the cloud provider business anymore.
  Which is largely the point that Eucalyptus is making here by designing to be explicitly compatible with the Amazon Web Services API. Use the same API == pack up your shit and move someplace else when the AWSPocalypse comes.
The canonical answer is: your own. by rs79 · 2013-02-12 10:38 · Score: 1

That is the cloud you operate yourself. You have less control over anything else and there's no reason not to do this.

--
Need Mercedes parts ?
1. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by node+3 · 2013-02-12 11:08 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  That is the cloud you operate yourself. You have less control over anything else and there's no reason not to do this.
  Except for price, convenience, time, maintenance, reliability, expertise...
  For most people, "less control" is a worthwhile tradeoff.
2. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by Nerdfest · 2013-02-12 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  Ah, the iOS attitude. It seems like a deal until you realize the difficulty and cost of leaving. *This* is why having an open platform matters.
3. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by PintoPiman · 2013-02-12 12:29 · Score: 2
  
  No one's got in-house talent for everything. If you're a media company, are you really going to do a better job of putting together a cloud to host your stuff than a dedicated cloud provider does?
  Do you fix your own car and cook your own food? Did you BUILD your own car and GROW your own food? Do you understand comparative advantage at all?
4. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 12:47 · Score: 0
  
  None of that has anything to do with open platforms and standards. If there is an open standard, you should use it, or risk being touted to a single provider that has you at their mercy with respect to options and pricing.
5. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by node+3 · 2013-02-12 12:53 · Score: 1
  
  Ah, the iOS attitude. It seems like a deal until you realize the difficulty and cost of leaving. *This* is why having an open platform matters.
  What's the cost of leaving? You just download your files (if you haven't already done so) and move on.
  That's *much* cheaper than the cost of doing it yourself if you don't have the spare hardware and have no clue or desire how to even get started, maintain, and secure it. That's why the "iOS attitude" is so popular.
6. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by node+3 · 2013-02-12 12:56 · Score: 2
  
  Please cite and example of a cloud service where this has become an actual problem.
  I'm unaware of any cloud files storage service that locks you in such that you can't move to another. They all let you download your files (they'd be fairly useless if they didn't!).
7. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by dbIII · 2013-02-12 13:07 · Score: 1
  
  If you're a media company
  They are the people that do websites these days, so yes they would do a better job than just about anyone else :)
  I get your point though, a place that sells bathroom fittings or whatever would be better off getting somebody else to put together their "cloud" web presence, but your local phone book will have quite a few people that can do the job. Sticking anything important in a place where you can't handle any fallout using your local legal system is IMHO stupid. Those terms of service are not worth shit the second your provider gets taken over or goes into receivership, and if any of your information is worth anything expect it to be sold unless you can get the local legal system to act.
8. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 13:27 · Score: 0
  
  Building my own car is, as you mention, prohibitively expensive. Paying a measly yearly fee for a domain name and spending a few minutes setting up secure FTP is not. Setting up an rsync cronjob between a few hard drives was even less of a hastle.
  This isn't building your own car - it's like changing the oil (except that it's a one-time deal). There are reasons people can't do it themselves, but those are mostly related to not having the right tools.
9. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by afgam28 · 2013-02-12 16:10 · Score: 1
  
  You're right, but it's more than just a tradeoff between inhouse and outsourcing. There are many benefits of cloud computing that you can only get when you share your data center with others, such as:
  * When you're a startup and you don't have much money, and you can't afford the high initial cost of setting up a data center (or many data centers, if you require multi-region redundancy). Even if it costs more, the cloud linearizes the cost of servers which simplifies planning.
  * When I want a new server, I just click a few buttons and it's there. It's all automated and so I don't have to deal with the idiots in my company's internal IT department. At my old company I used to have to spend weeks or sometimes months begging for servers, and getting signatures from up and down the org chart. At my current company we use EC2 and I can get new servers in seconds.
  * And because there are APIs to do this (in addition to the web UI), I can program my web app to automatically provision new servers when it needs it. Elastic autoscaling is awesome because if you operate a website with peaky load you don't have to pay for servers during the times that load is low. In this case, renting is a better payment model than buying. A cloud that you operate yourself will always suck, because everyone has to provision enough hardware to meet their individual peak loads. It's much more efficient to share.
10. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 17:48 · Score: 0
  
  Not for most people who frequent Slashdot.
11. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by rs79 · 2013-02-12 19:17 · Score: 1
  
  I'd love to be able to show you numbers but all I can really do is point out I've done this since 93 and it's worked out really well. And I did read some guys analysis of it and he found it to be cheaper, sorry that's the best I can do.
  Set up a home server. Make it nice. They drop it off at a buddies. Or send the disk image to the other side of the country to a buddy there. Repeat. Now make one more at home and use that. Get a cable and a dsl connection and you'll have better uptime than Google. Add a sat link if you're really serious and drive it off a solar powered battery array (you can get to 6v bigass lead acid batteries for $200, they're a prewar design that hasn't changed and still work great. If have the bucks (about $500 I think) get a pair of Royce batteries - they don't vent hydrogen and last longer and made to a much much higher standard, the Rolls is implied in my mind) so it'll work even if the power and local isp's are out. It'll be slow and expensive but it's better than not working.
  Now make them talk to each other however you like. Or use them manually. Point is, telcos peer circuits, uucp would "pass your mail if you pass mine" so having somebody you really trust keep a server for you works well, you may want to reciprocate you may not, but this is all doable. That is, I've one it and for a long time.
  Or find the DHT cloud of your dreams and throw everything in there. There's a thousand ways to slice this but the current commercial ones are the moral equivalent of punched card decks; I wouldn't bother.
  
  --
  Need Mercedes parts ?
12. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by tlambert · 2013-02-12 21:23 · Score: 1
  
  Please cite and example of a cloud service where this has become an actual problem.
  I'm unaware of any cloud files storage service that locks you in such that you can't move to another. They all let you download your files (they'd be fairly useless if they didn't!).
  Have you tried sync'ing your protected content on your iPad to a cloud other than the Apple iCloud? In order to understand why this isn't possible, you need to understand that what is commonly called "The iCloud" is actually a small amount of metadata that refers back to the actually encrypted data sitting in a CDN (Content Distribution Network). This is why Apple is so eager to index all your media files that you have already on your machine, and "upgrade it" to a higher bitrate -- the bitrate of the files already stored in the CDN backing the iCloud.
  Similarly, any login services that's effectively forced on you to obtain credentials, such as the Google Web Login in ChromeBooks, ties you specifically to their back end services and credential infrastructure. Given that it's boot-to-login with signed code up to the point of actual login operations, there's no good technical reason that the login couldn't be via OpenID, or into FaceBook, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, LinkedIn, or some other credentialling authority whom you consider "trusted enough to verify my credentials for me". I'm almost positive that this is one of the reasons FaceBook is frequently rumored to be developing their own phone and/pr working with partners to get them to build a phone that would use FaceBook's credentials instead.
  Now it's true that you could argue that people who buy into these ecosystems know what they are getting into, but that's nonetheless 5 examples of devices specifically tied to back end cloud services, with the easy potential for more devices as other vendors attempt to get into the Android/iPhone/Nook/Kindle/ChromeBook space themselves.
13. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by node+3 · 2013-02-13 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  Every document stored in iCloud (music, tv shows, movies, contacts, apps, books,pages documents, etc.) are downloadable. If you couldn't, it would make for a shitty cloud (you can upload all you want, but you can never access your files? How does that even make any sense).
  You can also store all of Apple's iCloud documents in other services. Gmail contacts, Amazon Music Locker, Dropbox, etc. I'm not sure you are aware of how iCloud works from the user's point of view.
  As for logins, that's not what is being discussed. No one makes a fuss that you can't log into your gmail account using your own server's PAM configuration, or on your NT domain. No one complains that you have to sign into Netflix to watch your Netflix content. You're right that Cromebooks require a (somewhat ironic) Google account, and that it's something to consider. But even that lets you use iCloud, Evernote, Dropbox, whatever. That's just for logging in to your computer and (of course) to get ever more people using Google services.
  > Now it's true that you could argue that people who buy into these ecosystems know what they are getting into, but that's nonetheless 5 examples of devices specifically tied to back end cloud services, with the easy potential for more devices as other vendors attempt to get into the Android/iPhone/Nook/Kindle/ChromeBook space themselves.
  Except that wasn't my question. Where is this a problem? How is your data locked away? Even with the Chromebook, if you decide to buy an iPad instead, it's simple enough to transfer all your data into iCloud, of if you prefer, just keep using all the Google apps as is.
  I'm definitely not saying there aren't downsides, or things to consider, just that having your data locked away isn't one of them.
14. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by tlambert · 2013-02-13 17:19 · Score: 1
  
  Every document stored in iCloud (music, tv shows, movies, contacts, apps, books,pages documents, etc.) are downloadable. If you couldn't, it would make for a shitty cloud (you can upload all you want, but you can never access your files? How does that even make any sense).
  This is incorrect. What is actually stored on the Apple servers in Virginia is metadata. This includes device keys for devices authorized on the account, and rights certificates to RE- download already downloaded content from the content distribution network.
  While there are some aspects of cloud storage for user-generated content, the tv shows, movies, apps, and books are neither user generated, nor are they stored with your account. They are stored in encrypted content form in the Content Distribution Network (historically, for iTunes, Apple has contracted with the Inktomi CDN in order to make this encrypted content available).
  Within the CDN itself, music is also encrypted so that someone can't just rape an Inktomi server and get an unencrypted copy of all the music in the iTunes Music Store.
  When you "restore" a tv show on your device from iCloud "backup", what actually happens is that iTunes is contacted and provides the knapsack key http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle–Hellman_knapsack_cryptosystem , which is then used with the device ID of the authorized device in order to generate an encrypted device key, which can then be used to decrypt the data from the CDN, and that's what gets downloaded to your machine. For music, the data is not reencrypted, for the other media, including TV shows, it's reencrypted as part of the streaming download so that the tv show or other media is tied to your authorized device.
  
  You can also store all of Apple's iCloud documents in other services. Gmail contacts, Amazon Music Locker, Dropbox, etc. I'm not sure you are aware of how iCloud works from the user's point of view.
  And I'm positive that you are not aware of the implementation details for the iCloud. Yes, for user generated content, which is the vast minority of content on an iPhone/iPad/iPod, that actually gets replicated off into the "iCloud" servers in virginia, along with the other metadata for the "more important" media content (it's more important because Apple gets $$$ from you for access to that content).
  The practical upshot is that Apple doesn't care if you store that minor account of content on their servers in Virginia, or spread it to hell and gone all over the Internet, so long as you pay for the content stored in the CDN in the first place, and can't access it without authorization keys to decrypt the CDN contents, said keys being stored in the metadata. Having to store a pissy number of key/value pairs in XML so that your address book contents replicate to all your devices you purchased from Apple is nothing, compared to the amount of data they are carrying around in X.509 certs containing FairPlay keys in them to secure the CDN contents from unauthorized access.
  People seem to believe that all cloud services are "the cloud", and that they can all just automatically "share data" between these services, when in fact, there is a huge amount of back end tying with the cloud content and the front end device, and the amount of user generated data is tiny, at best, compared to, for example, the same thing happening for YouTube or Amazon paid content (both secured by Adobe Access http://www.adobe.com/products/adobe-access.html , or any of the other protected content out there protected by other systems, such as Apple's.
15. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by node+3 · 2013-02-14 09:20 · Score: 1
  
  This is incorrect. What is actually stored on the Apple servers in Virginia is metadata. This includes device keys for devices authorized on the account, and rights certificates to RE- download already downloaded content from the content distribution network.
  Please quit speaking about things for which you have no understanding.
  I have:
  Contacts, bookmarks, songs (my original files, not Apple's versions), iWork documents, photographs, and a multitude of other files and data, stored in Apple's iCloud servers. All of which I can freely download at any time.
  You are correct that any purchases I've made, along with songs Apple has been able to match, are not stored individually, but even all of those files are re-downloadable by me.
  
  And I'm positive that you are not aware of the implementation details for the iCloud.
  You have no clue when I'm aware of. I do wish you'd quit yapping about things you don't understand. You are focussing on something that is completely meaningless to the discussion at hand: the behind the scenes implementation, while completely ignoring the real discussion: access to the data.
16. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by PintoPiman · 2013-02-14 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  The problem with setting up your own FTP server (and all the other services you'll need) isn't *expense*. It's *expertise*. Now, if you don't HAVE the expertise, then it's pretty expensive because you need to hire someone, or deal with the costly results of trying when you don't know how (i.e., getting hacked).
17. Re:The canonical answer is: your own. by tlambert · 2013-02-16 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  This is incorrect. What is actually stored on the Apple servers in Virginia is metadata. This includes device keys for devices authorized on the account, and rights certificates to RE- download already downloaded content from the content distribution network.
  Please quit speaking about things for which you have no understanding.
  Please quit speaking about things the people you eat lunch with didn't write. Like iCloud.
Eucalyptus openness by Dishwasha · 2013-02-12 10:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

One of the reasons I went with OpenNebula a while back instead of Eucalyptus is the third-party modules (i.e. VMWare) were open source in OpenNebula and proprietary in Eucalyptus. Granted it's been over a year since I looked so they may have changed that.
1. Re:Eucalyptus openness by martenmickos · 2013-02-12 17:29 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  We believe in Linux, KVM and Eucalyptus - all production-ready open source software freely available to anyone. Just download and get going. - If you have chosen to use closed source software like VMware's, then as Dishwasha points out there are commercial plug-ins available for Eucalyptus.
  Marten Mickos
  CEO, Eucalyptus Systems
2. Re:Eucalyptus openness by CAIMLAS · 2013-02-12 21:33 · Score: 1
  
  I like OpenNebula as well, in part because the setup and installation of nodes is so trivial (the agent is so well implemented). I can turn anything into a node, more or less.
  
  --
  ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
3. Re:Eucalyptus openness by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-13 02:41 · Score: 0
  
  Question for you - right now I'm using KVM on CentOS to host a number of virtual machines. If I set up Eucalyptus, how does the allocation of resources to the virtual machines work? Could I have 5 nodes, and allocate 50% (say 2.5 physical machines) of the resources to one virtual machine & the rest divided between 10 more, or is any given virtual machine limited to the physical hardware available on a particular node? From my reading (admittedly not extensive) I think it's the latter, but if I'm wrong I'd love to know!
My choice by maxwell+demon · 2013-02-12 10:41 · Score: 1, Offtopic

I think the most open cloud is this one.

--
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Cumulonimbus Cloud by Threni · 2013-02-12 10:43 · Score: 1

Seriously, GIS them. They're awesome.
Open to you or Open to Everyone Else? by eksith · 2013-02-12 10:43 · Score: 1

There's an important difference. One that's open to you is likely in-house-reinventing-the-wheel type thing (which I'm not necessarily opposed to), but will likely give you the most options if you've installed locally. After all, you'll be giving yourself those options.
The Open to Everyone Else is likely built by someone else, maybe lot of other people, and if the Rackspace controversy is any hint, you're still at the mercy of the developers and their sponsors. You're still faced with the same problem: Eucalyptus isn't controlled by me, therefore I'm still at their mercy should they decide to switch ethical gears.

--
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
1. Re:Open to you or Open to Everyone Else? by martenmickos · 2013-02-12 17:32 · Score: 2
  
  Thx for the comment. I'd say the right to fork prevents the bad things from happening. If you are ever displeased with what the steward of an open source project is doing with it (be it Eucalyptus or something else), you can take the source code and fork it. Happens all the time (OpenOffice, MySQL, Android, etc.).
2. Re:Open to you or Open to Everyone Else? by eksith · 2013-02-12 18:43 · Score: 1
  
  This is true, but if I had the resources to fork an existing project, then I may have had the resources to create something myself (with maybe a little extra time/effort) in the beginning as well, no?
  Let's forget the stack for a while... Imagine it's just the OS. Say Ubuntu. Some of the things bundled and some of their decisions lately have been controversial, so if I've been using them for a while and maybe I don't agree with the direction... What now? Do I go with a Ubuntuesque distro that maintained what I liked before, but that may or may not be here in a year or two down the road or do I fork it myself? Or maybe dump the whole thing and go LFS completely tailoring it to my needs?
  Imagine the amount of time and effort needed to do that and make sure everything I'm running currently will still work and I'll have no hiccups or at least fewer, more easily managed, hiccups.
  Wouldn't I have been better off going with something custom in the first place? Or maybe even a less adventurous distro, like Debian? But then what would it take to switch to either option now that I'm already established on Ubuntu?
  You see, it's easy to say fork it, and in principle I could, but doing so is rarely cake walk and seldom painless.
  
  --
  If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
3. Re:Open to you or Open to Everyone Else? by martenmickos · 2013-02-12 19:18 · Score: 2
  
  I'd say that forking is an order of magnitude (or perhaps 2) easier than creating the product in the first place. Forking is hard work. But creating a product from scratch is enormously harder.
  The creators and owners have the right to decide on the roadmap of their creation. Closed source software can't deal with disagreements, but open source software can. If you don't like the roadmap, you can create your own branch or your own fork. You don't have to make use of that freedom, but it is a freedom nevertheless, available to all.
The one attached to your router? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 10:47 · Score: 0

Under your control: In your house, running free software. What more do you really need? Lamp and a browser.
Which is the most open cloud? by fyngyrz · 2013-02-12 11:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Cumulous, I think. This is because they tend to build vertically, leaving space one from another.

--
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
1. Re:Which is the most open cloud? by omi5cron · 2013-02-12 11:22 · Score: 2
  
  i would go with cirrus, as they seem to be more spread out across the sky!
2. Re:Which is the most open cloud? by nospam007 · 2013-02-12 23:07 · Score: 1
  
  I use BlueSky. It has no clouds whatsoever.
3. Re:Which is the most open cloud? by eugene_roux · 2013-02-12 23:31 · Score: 1
  
  Cumulous, I think. This is because they tend to build vertically, leaving space one from another.
  
  i would go with cirrus, as they seem to be more spread out across the sky!
  ObXKCD
  http://xkcd.com/1117/
  
  --
  Part Time Philosopher, Oft Times Romantic, Full Time Unix Geek
Re:Not Them by MightyYar · 2013-02-12 11:06 · Score: 1

Yes, to this day it Plays For Sure!

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Business model arms race by Rob+the+Roadie · 2013-02-12 11:13 · Score: 1

There is an arms race between companies like Nebula and Eucalyptus, backed by VCs, as to who can stay in the game long enough to be the defacto clound management environment for companies who want an open alternative to VMWare/Microsoft but need on-premise or have a specific use-case so can't choose EWS or Google.
Eucalyptus, for all the partner-with-amazon, are loosing market share and shedding staff.
Nebula are still struggling to get a viable product out of the door.
(I know senior people in both companies)
Who will win? Who cares! Because as its 'open' at least when the VCs behind Euca/Neubla shut up shop (or they are bought by HP/IBM) and go home customer will still have the code, and in the example of Nebula also own a box in the mid rack as a cloud controller.
1. Re:Business model arms race by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 16:17 · Score: 0
  
  I'd kill for a /. auto-moderation of -5 for comments where the poster doesn't know the difference between lose & loose.
2. Re:Business model arms race by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-13 00:06 · Score: 0
  
  at least when the VCs behind Euca/Neubla shut up shop (or they are bought by HP/IBM)
  Why would HP or IBM buy either? They're both OpenStack shops. HP has employees on the OpenStack Board, even.
It's just web hosting by dbIII · 2013-02-12 12:59 · Score: 1

Mostly I agree with you but there are real reasons to get another party to host your website (which is pretty well all the "cloud" is, even if it's got webdav type file sharing). If you don't have the bandwidth locally it makes sense, but personally I'd prefer a co-located box or virtual machine somewhere unless it's really trivial. I did it the lazy hosted thing myself for an FTP site when the local network connection was two ADSL lines stuck together giving upload speeds of buggerall. The stuff would trickle out but once it was there at the hosted site clients could get it at full speed.
While the google stuff looks good it fails once people start doing things with files in the hundreds of megabytes - you want that sort of thing to be happening on your own LAN and not choking a connection to the internet.
Your Own by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 17:37 · Score: 0

Just put in the damn effort and do it yourself.
Choose any of several popular Linux ditros, setup a dynamic DNS if necessary and install Apache, FTP, SSL, SSH and any number of other open source daemons that can be easily downloaded and installed in ready-prepared packages. If you know what you want, it's a weekend project at most.
I did this with a Core 2 with moderate hardware (but, really, you don't even need a separate computer if you have enough RAM to run a virtual machine) It's my web, backup, print, NAS and media server. Even with my comparatively pathetic DSL connection, I can remotely stream my music.
If you want to know what cloud provider to trust, try yourself.
I RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 19:34 · Score: 0

what a bunch of fucking bullshit.
WWFSFD? by unixisc · 2013-02-12 20:52 · Score: 1

Why don't RMS & the FSF guys start a cloud service called AfferoCloud, where they put up a AGPL3 licensed service? That would also be a way for them to raise money for their projects - for those interested. Then everybody who's sweating over 'free' and 'open' can flock there, and not bother about any of the other cloud services.
Worst first line of a summary evar? by tehcyder · 2013-02-12 22:36 · Score: 1

"In a landscape with dueling open clouds, which is the most open?"
Extending an already stupid metaphor by mixing it with another stupid metaphor does not create a super-powered metaphor. It creates nonsense.

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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it