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Re: Please let's not talk about "clouds"



On Sat Apr 27 2013 07:24:22 AM CST, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

>         > It is a category error to describe a service as "proprietary" (or
> as       > "free").   If AWS is a service, then it isn't proprietary, and it
> isn't       > free.
> 
>         Probably, in your view. Though I still prefer to use Linux, Apache,
> PHP       and MySQL,
> 
> You must mean the GNU/Linux system.   Since it is more our work than
> Mr Torvalds', would you please give us equal mention when you talk
> about it?

I was refering to what people commonly refers as
"LAMP stack", which is why I didn't write GNU/Linux.
I do agree though, and support the work of the FSF
from all my hart. Just like when writing "cloud"
instead of "IaaS cloud", it is always dangerous, but
easy, to take shortcuts (sorry for that one).

>         Now, let's imagine I rent 10 physical servers from a provider, and
> ask       him to install and maintain OpenStack on it for me, then I use the
>         service using the OpenStack API. Even that is a remote service, don't
>         you think that's much much more free than what AWS does?
> 
> Ir you rent physical servers, and they run OpenStack for you, maybe
> they will run your own copy of OpenStack, etc.   Then that level is
> under your control.

Yes, that is the best situation, with the use in the
full control of everything.

> On the other hand, if we imagine that a company (Omazon?) offers to
> rent you VMs working with _their_ version of OpenStack, then you don't
> get any more control over the virtual platform with them than you get
> with AWS.

Which is why people got after Rackspace and HP
recently, because their Openstack service was not
an exact copy from the Git repository. Hopefully,
this will soon be the case back again, if we trust
their PR. I'll be in the crowd pointing fingers if
they don't fix it in a timely manner as announced.

> Thus, whether the program is available as free software
> is only part of the question.

Yes, definitivly, but it is a major par of the pb,
together with interroperability.

Thomas (over my phone, with bad wrapping included)


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