

Open-source software has won the argument. Now a new threat to openness looms - zzkt
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13740181

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Maro
This is the usual, but valid, argument that as apps move to the cloud, we get
a new kind of vendor lock-in.

The first step you can take is to use the Affero GPL instead of the old GPL:

"... version differs from the version of the GNU GPL on which it is based in
having an additional provision addressing use of software over a computer
network. The additional provision requires that the complete source code be
made available to any network user of the AGPL-licensed work, typically a web
application."

This doesn't solve all problems, as it doesn't cover software developed from-
scratch by the big players.

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bk
I think an "Affero LGPL" would be good to get companies to contribute back
library enhancements without "infecting" and thus having to give up their
whole IP.

Regarding data portability, I've become a fan of json - it's easy to
understand and process, and it forces interfaces to be simple (compared to
xml, e.g.).

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timwiseman
The thing that a lot of people seem to forget in this debate is that there is
room for all 3. On a personal level, I make extensive use of commercial
software (especially MS SQL Server) for some things, wide use of open source
software (FireFox and Python are first amoungst many) and some cloud software
(gmail, google calandar come to mind).

On the business side though, I would be hesitant to ever advise an employer or
client to make use of cloud resources for a few reasons. One of them is the
lock in as mentioned in the article. Another is the risk of loss of data that
is outside the businesses control. Another is the fact that the cloud service
could upgrade the software in a way we didn't like with very little recourse
on our part.

After all, there are times when you want to keep the older version. For
instance, numerous businesses have declined to switch to Vista and I will not
be leaving python 2.54 until some of the libraries I use finish their updating
process.

Of course, all of the concerns I mentioned can be addressed, but it would
require substantial due diligence on the IT side to verify that the cloud
computing company has adequate protections in place and then on legal's side
to ensure that they are contractually enforceable.

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aristus
For small, technically-oriented companies, this article probably sounds kind
of lame. But think about 80legs, or SmugMug, or someone with a 200-machine
farm and 20TB of data squirreled away in S3. Moving to a different cloud would
be an expensive, tedious, big-bang proposition.

It doesn't matter how open the data formats are. If it's difficult to
simultaneously use two or more vendors at a time, you are locked in.

~~~
jrockway
What about the non-cloud version? Is it easy to move 20TB from one storage
system to another. What about to a new data center? What about to a cloud
provider?

I think if you have 20TB of data that you need to have online all the time,
things are going to be hard regardless.

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aristus
Yes, but if you have your own datacenter and some spiffy new software or
device comes on the market, you can buy it and set it up. You can take
advantage of innovation from anywhere.

If you are sitting in Cloud A and Cloud B introduces some new thing... you're
out of luck until Cloud A (who knows you're not going to move) decides to
offer something similar.

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GiraffeNecktie
It's not a threat to openness, it's a threat to portability. It's not quite
the same thing. You can be open without being portable and vice versa.

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ckinnan
Yeah, the article includes SaaS as cloud computing. The SaaS portability
problem has been around for years.

Cloud computing as I think of it-- AWS, Mosso, etc-- is generally built on
familiar and open technologies. If anything it is easier than ever to redeploy
an application with a different cloud provider...and vendors like CloudKick
and RightScale make switching trivial.

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pj
I think the economist has done more harm than good with this article.

~~~
lr
For sure. Talk about "clouding" the subject. The cloud this article is talking
about is not the "cloud" of today, it is the "cloud" of yesterday, i.e., this
has been a problem since the first web app went online for commercial use well
over a decade ago. Today's cloud, to me, is about software and service
providers using cloud resources, and so far those are the same resources that
were used in-house (Linux, MySQL, etc., etc.). There is little danger in
getting data out of one MySQL DB and importing it into another at another
cloud provider.

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gruseom
I think Amazon has a chance of achieving serious lock-in with AWS, not by
doing anything pernicious, but simply by adding so many valuable
differentiating features that at some point (perhaps already) it will be too
much of a pain to switch.

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grandalf
rightscale.com is going to support multiple cloud vendors, and I would guess
they'll offer consulting services to help people move.

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skwiddor
Come on, it's just another vendor. Being tied to a vendor is a choice we've
always made, the beauty of Unix is the abstraction. Present an attractive
abstraction and developers will come, not only because of the strength of
_your_ provision but because we also have to recognize how hard it would be to
change environment providers.

The Unix model presents files and folders, it is a fantastic model with a few
operations. You present me with a file system and I'll manipulate it. We've
spent 30-40 years building tools to manipulate files grep, sed, awk, join,
sort etc.

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TweedHeads
I don't see any threats. Just don't use services that don't let you port your
data. And encourage the use of those who abide by standards and fair play.

Demand portability!

~~~
windsurfer
Ask Richard Stallman about "Easier said than done".

