Open Source and Cloud

The Two Great Tastes...

John Mark Walker Gluster.org Community Guy Open Cloud Initiative Vice-president April 4, 2012

WTF is Cloud

Cloud is a distributed and automated service delivery system

Origins: Increasing emphasis on automation Increasing reliance on network services Increasing commoditization of hardware and software components Increasing scale-out of operations Goals: flexibility, agility, automation and economies of scale

The Future of Gluster.org - John Mark Walker

April 6, 2012

WTF is Open Source

Open source: distributed software development system

Origins: Increasing commoditization of software + downward price pressure Increasing connectivity and knowledge sharing between interested parties Increasing demands for easy adoption Deploy first, ask questions later A sprinkling of advocacy Goals: quicker development, economies of brain scale, defining (and defending) fair marketplace

What They are not

Open source != distribution system

Freely available != open source

See, eg. Splunk

Cloud != virtualization or any specific type of software

Automated, scalable service delivery over a network

Similarities of OSS and Cloud

Both reflect a changing landscape in the data center towards automation and agility Both reflect increasing independence on the part of developers and operations Both also drive more of the above Positive feedback loop for more data center automation

Similarities of OSS and Cloud

Open source facilitates adoption-led model Cloud computing thrives on an adoption-led model Open source facilitates faster development Cloud computing thrives on faster development

Theories, Hypotheses and other Heretical Things

Hypothesis #1:

Cloud computing is not possible without open source How do we test?

Party Like It's 1998

You have a really cool research project at Stanford, do you...

A.) buy lots of expensive proprietary software, hardware and hope the investors don't mind B.) DIY with lots of custom glue around freely available open source bits

Party Like It's 1998

Pros and Cons of A:

Con: It's really expensive Con: It's difficult to change course Pro: Will (probably) be easier to deploy, configure and admin Conclusion: how much is your business agility worth?

Party Like It's 1998

Pros and Cons of B:

Con: It's really expensive Con: A lot of necessary customization Con: Domain experts are essential Pro: I can do whatever I want

Change on a dime; mix and match vendors

Conclusion: how much is your agility worth?

Party Like It's 1998

It's not about up-front cost It's about agility, fast adoption, iterative course corrections, no gatekeepers Ergo, Open source is necessary for cloud to exist Prediction: every cloud player will utilize open source on a massive scale

The Cloud Ecosystem

What major companies couldn't exist as we know them sans open source? See Paul Krugman's work on geographic impact on economies

Geographic ecosystems emerge and benefit each other

Impact of Cloud

The opposite isn't true

Cloud isn't necessary for open source to exist

What is the impact of cloud on open source?

Impact of Cloud
3 possible hypotheses:

cloud computing deemphasizes software in general, therefore will reduce production and/or consumption of open source software cloud computing will neither augment nor reduce production and/or consumption of open source software cloud computing will increase the production and consumption of open source software

Impact of Cloud

I chose #3!

Prediction: cloud computing will speed up the development of open source software

Hypothesis debunking

Hypothesis: cloud computing deemphasizes software in general, thus reducing need for open source software

yes, local software and traditional desktops are less relevant

Local computing is also a delivery model, like cloud Cloud computing still needs to run software And cloud demands efficiency and agility open source will continue to be utilized to build cloud-y services

BUT - open source isn't a delivery model, it's a development model

Prediction: open source will continue to dominate cloud computing, and the need for open source software will only increase

Hypothesis debunking
Hypothesis #2: cloud computing will have no impact on open source software, because they're orthogonal

Yes, yes, one is a delivery model, the other is a development model, therefore there's no causal connection, right?

competition == increasing demands for agility and efficiency == open source competition drives community participation increasing popularity of cloud computing will drive increasing usage of open source software

separation of services from software actually makes this easier ie. Open core is dead

Hypothesis Bunking
Hypothesis #3: cloud computing drives more open source software + participation

if #1 and #2 are false, then #3 must be true!

if open source software gives companies more agility and helps them deliver services more efficiently, then there is definite ROI therefore, a company would be foolish not to invest in open source development the adoption-led model of open source ties directly into the credo of cloud computing:

build first, ask questions later

The Outer Limits

Ok fine, Open source begets cloud, which begets more open source, now what? Will cloud services be open sourced themselves? What does that even mean?

The Outer Limits

Let's review the software world: Remember 1999? What happened?

Linux started the long trek to glory in the data center So did apache And MySQL. And PostgresQL And later Mongo, Hadoop and GlusterFS :) And lots of other infrastructure technologies

But open source never took over the desktop/workstation

The Outer Limits

Huh? Android! New mobile paradigm!

The apps are, alas, mostly non-free

Prediction: cloud services, like mobile apps and desktop applications, will remain mostly proprietary/non-free

The Outer Limits

Huh? Android! New mobile paradigm!

The apps are, alas, mostly non-free

Prediction: cloud services, like mobile apps and desktop applications, will remain mostly proprietary/non-free

Open Source in Cloud-y World

What does open source mean in a cloud-y world?

Hypothesis: in a world where the distinction between copyleft and liberal licensing is diminished, liberal licensing will grow

I, for one, welcome my new Apache overlords.

Open Source in Cloud-y World

GPL was made for local computers

delivering a service over a network does not convey software, according to the GPL v3 the central driver of vanilla GPL is obviated Apache licensing will continue to grow

Open Source in Cloud-y World

The Affero GPL was created to address this

closes the service provider loophole copyleft in a cloudy world is it enough?

Open Source in Cloud-y World

What's the lesson we learned form the desktop?

JM Keynes and local monopolies for every market

every market entraps customers, preventing them from leaving data matters it just wasn't obvious enough in the context of local computing the source code was not enough in all contexts

in a cloudy world, importance of data is magnified

What does that portend?

Lock-in

The world is full of monopolies

No such thing as frictionless economy Data represents the exit blocker
Entity 1 Entity 2 Entity 3

Entity 4

Entity 5

Open Source in a Cloud-y World

Is there an economic driver for Open Data?

Hypothesis: er... maybe? In some cases. In some social media cases, maybe walled gardens do not lend themselves to total openness

Too much value in keeping some data locked up Will competition prove the difference?

Open Source in a Cloud-y World

Is there an economic driver for Richard Stallman?

Probably not

Why is email (mostly) free?

Competition drove adoption of email standards

Summary

Open source enables cloud computing Cloud computing, in turn, enables more open source May not graduate to the service/app/data layer NEEDZ MOAR RICHARD STALLMAN

Thank You

My contact info

johnmark@redhat.com Twitter & identi.ca: @johnmark http://opencloudinitiative.org/ http://gluster.org/