The Cloud Computing Bandwagon and Open Source
October 26, 2009
I don’t think too much about open source software unless a client prods me. There are three reasons:
First, I have some clients who think they are smarter than any other outfit on earth. These folks prefer to “roll their own” even if the technology folks don’t know enough to realize that a financial swamp awaits them.
Second, there are rules and regulations that make it impossible for anyone but the most motivated procurement manager to figure out how to swizzle open source software into certain security obsessed and tightly regulated environments.
Third, quite a few information technology professionals are not up to speed on what’s available. Examples range from the KoolAid drinkers who imbibe IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle flavors. Open source is a not synonymous with job security. Forget technology. The paycheck and health benefits argue for the commercial solutions even if the information technology folks know these solutions don’t work very well. Lousy commercial software is a warrant for job security.
I read the Linux Journal article “Cloud Computing: Good or Bad for Open Source” against the background of these three ideas. The article jumps on the cloud computing bandwagon and then backs into the open source issue. For me the key passage was:
Ideally, what we need is a completely open source cloud computing infrastructure on which applications providing people with things like (doubly) free email and word processing services could be offered. Now, it’s clearly not possible to create the kind of huge facilities that Amazon, Google and Microsoft are building around the world. Not even Mr Shuttleworth, with all his millions, could sustain that for long without charging somewhere along the line. So simply running open source programs like Eucalyptus is not going to work. The trick here is not to fight the battle on the opponents’ terms, but to come up with something completely different. For example, how about creating an open source, *distributed* cloud? By downloading and running some free code on your computer, you could contribute processing power and disc space that collectively creates a global, distributed cloud computing system. You would benefit by being able to use services that run on it, and at the same time you would help to sustain the entire open source cloud ecosystem in a scalable fashion. Collateral benefits would be resilience – it would be almost impossible to take down such a cloud – plus integral privacy if data is scattered across thousands of machines in the right way.
In my opinion, open source vendors are not much different from commercial software vendors. The idea is to hook a customer and then charge for services or extra code ornaments.
The “real” open source folks often have a different motivation factor. But once the market driven forces blow, the ideals of open source may be blown away unless anchored to firmer stuff. The cloud is going to become a proprietary “space” if the present trend set by Amazon and Google continues. Sure, some technology is open source and released to the community. But in my opinion, these companies will use whatever techniques are available to deliver to their shareholders. When money is involved, the ideals of open source are like a fried egg on a Teflon pan. Some bits will stick, but the goal is to move the omelet so it can be consumed. That consumption drive is more powerful in some sectors than others. But money trumps ideals in some organizations and in today’s economic climate, the cloud will not be exempt from proprietary plays from very big, competitive organizations whose agendas are set by the stakeholders, not a group working for the benefit of everyone.
Cloud computing will move forward with or without open source in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, October 26, 2009
You can bet your socks that no open source outfit paid me for this essay. In fact, no one did.
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