1.
Why Cloud Computing has
to go the FOSS way
By: Ahmed Mekkawy
Founder | CTO – Spirula Systems
ahmed.mekkawy@spirulasystems.com

2.
●
Ahmed Mekkawy AKA linuxawy.
●
Free Software Foundation (FSF) member.
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Egypt GNU/Linux Users Group (EGLUG) admin.
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ArabTechies member.
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Co-founder of OpenEgypt (under establishment).
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Independent consultant for MCIT.
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Founder | CTO of Spirula Systems.
About the Presenter

3.
Freedom, openness, and
the cloud

4.
Credit: Opensoft

5.
The cloud

6.
What is cloud?
●
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS.
●
Wait a minute.. we had these already!!
●
"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that
we've redefined cloud computing to include everything
that we already do," he said. "The computer industry is
the only industry that is more fashion-driven than
women's fashion." RMS – Sep 2008
●
The important in cloud is the “aaS” part.

7.
As a Service?
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Agility.
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Flexibility.
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Customizability.
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Pay as you go.
●
Don't mess with reliability, please.

8.
How it all started?

9.
CERN - 1993
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

10.
Open Internet?
●
The “Open Internet” is the Internet as we know
it. It’s open because it uses free, publicly
available standards that anyone can access and
build to. www.fcc.gov

11.
Sorry, I meant GNU - 1983

12.
GNU
●
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration
project. Its aim is to give computer users freedom and
control in their use of their computers and computing
devices, by collaboratively developing and providing
software that is based on the following freedom rights:
users are free to run the software, share it (copy,
distribute), study it and modify it. GNU software guarantees
these freedom-rights legally (via its license), and is
therefore free software; the use of the word "free" always
being taken to refer to freedom. - Wikipedia

13.
No really, it was IBM – 60's

14.
IBM Virtualization
●
The first stake in the ground was CP-40, an operating
system for the System/360 mainframe that IBM's
Robert Creasy and Les Comeau started developing in
1964 to create VMs within the mainframe. It was
quickly replaced by CP-67, the second version of IBM's
hypervisor. The early hypervisor gave each mainframe
user what was called a conversational monitor system
(CSM), essentially a single-user operating system.

15.
What have we been doing?
●
Some people say “everything is a game”. So
let's see what gamers say about it.
●
Let's assume a multi-player strategy game,
aimed for building, not killing your
enemies/competitors.

16.
Games
●
Start all alike
●
Differentiate, innovate, be unpredictable some
times.
●
When the world is becoming mature, take the
same actions with your competitors.

17.
What about innovation?
●
You can innovate, just tell the others what is the
good things you are doing so you can all help
each other (you do want that to happen).

18.
What's the relation?
●
Mainframes + terminals.
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PCs, lots of them.
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Cloud, and mobility.

19.
So, what about Software?
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Software was free/libre.
●
An open letter to hobbyists.
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Proprietary software.
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Breaking free.

20.
Innovation in FOSS?
●
“The intrinsic parallelism and free idea
exchange in OSS has benefits that are not
replicable with our current licensing model.”
Microsoft - Halloween Document I (1998)

21.
Why Open Clouds?
Dell currently says:
As an introduction to the topic of open source cloud computing I
thought I would put out some common reasons for why open
source matters in cloud computing:
●
Customers want greater cloud choice/flexibility without vendor lock-in
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Establish global, public/open cloud standards
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(Initial) pricing is lower with no licensing fees
●
Open source provides cloud operators the ability to customize the
solution to meet their existing customers’ needs while also having the
ability to push the code back into the main project
●
Hypervisor flexibility – leverage existing investments in technology while
expanding the opportunity to leverage new and possibly open solutions
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/cloud/w/wiki/3447.open-source-cloud-computing.aspx

22.
Patents?
http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77139082&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

23.
OpenStack
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Started by NASA and Rackspace.
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Currently, collaboration for huge number of big
enterprises, the kind of guys which take such
move for their own benefit.
●
Why? Simply none of them can do this alone,
while they all need it.

24.
OpenStack – Cont'd
●
“OpenStack is a global collaboration of
developers and cloud computing technologists
producing the ubiquitous open source cloud
computing platform for public and private
clouds.” OpenStack.org

25.
OpenStack – Cont'd
●
“Why open matters: All of the code for OpenStack is freely
available under the Apache 2.0 license. Anyone can run it,
build on it, or submit changes back to the project. We
strongly believe that an open development model is the only
way to foster badly-needed cloud standards, remove the fear
of proprietary lock-in for cloud customers, and create a large
ecosystem that spans cloud providers.” OpenStack.org

26.
User Perspective
●
It's sad but true, but usually the user (especially if it's a
business not an individual) doesn't care about the used
technology, rather cares about features. Most of you
don't care that this is LibreOffice no M$-Office. You only
care about the content.
●
Cloud is no different. Give me what I need, don't care if
it's a Xen or a KVM as long as it's working - except
when it comes to financials, capacity,etc.

27.
User Perspective – Cont'd
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The good thing in cloud, is that the user is
aware of his need for freedom as well as
flexibility.
●
Especially vendor lock-in is hardly accepted by
the user. Interoperability is essential in the cloud
world.
●
Open Standards.

28.
The Inevitable cloud
●
"Somebody is saying this is inevitable, and
whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's
very likely to be a set of businesses
campaigning to make it true." RMS - Sep 2008
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I don't have issues with that, as long as they are
making it true, the FOSS way.

29.
The Inevitable

30.
The inevitable Freedom
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Open Source Software.
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Open Standards.
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Open Internet.
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Open Hardware
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Open Data.
● In short, Users Freedom.

31.
ahmed.mekkawy@spirulasystems.com
This presentation is made using 100% FLOSS
LibreOffice - Cinnamon DE - Debian jessie GNU/Linux
These slides will be available on:
http://www.slideshare.net/linuxawy
http://www.spirulasystems.com
No Clouds have been hurt while preparing this presentation
Questions?