Free Software "cloud computing"

[Daniel Pocock]

On 12/02/14 16:07, Lucile Falgueyrac wrote:
> On 02/12/2014 03:53 PM, Vicen Rodriguez wrote:
>
>> I think "open source cloud computing" is used, at least in most of the
>> cases, as a short way to say "open source software for building private
>> and public clouds". OpenStack (http://www.openstack.org/ ) is, maybe,
>> the main example of that.
>> Do you think there is any other meaning for that expression?
> Well, I often see it in the context of pubic bodies, but it fits with
> your explanation. For example:
>
> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/improve-it-security-ep-demands-open-source
>
> So it would mean a "private cloud" at the scale of their institutions
> (European Parliament..) ? Self hosted free software cloud solutions
> would be more appropriate then..
>
> To answer my own question, I found something about standardisation:
> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/etsi-open-source-clouds-worth-considering

It can mean a lot of things

When people talk about Gmail as a cloud service, then the open source
alternative may just be an instance of Squirrelmail running on a hosted
server.  Some people may use the word "cloud" in a very general sense
and describe their mail server as an private cloud service powered by
free software.

Then there are dedicated IaaS solutions (like XCP and OpenStack).

One of the aims of the users of these services is to treat them as
commodities: so somebody could start running their business on an
OpenStack cloud operated by an ISP but they could migrate all their
application images into OpenStack on private hardware in future.  It is
not so much about federation as it about avoiding vendor lock in (like
with document formats)