You bring up an interesting and relevant point about how various APIs are used by the applications. But when I think about how the world of software is evolving, it seems that those management APIs are becoming more important, because a software application of today must know not just how to run, but also how to be deployed.

I believe it is both difficult and important to align with dominant designs. 30 years ago it was a good bet to develop software for the new x86 architecture, 15 years ago it was a good idea to bet on the new world-wide web, 10 years ago on the new LAMP stack. Today, the API layer is where different pieces of software come together and where brilliant software developers congregate. It's about AWS, but it's even more about the new design paradigm that the AWS APIs represent. Of course there will not be just one set of APIs. We know that in addition to AWS, we have OpenStack, Microsoft, VMware and Google are all building theirs. One of them will be dominant. Randy Bias brings forward an important point.

I'd say that forking is an order of magnitude (or perhaps 2) easier than creating the product in the first place. Forking is hard work. But creating a product from scratch is enormously harder.

The creators and owners have the right to decide on the roadmap of their creation. Closed source software can't deal with disagreements, but open source software can. If you don't like the roadmap, you can create your own branch or your own fork. You don't have to make use of that freedom, but it is a freedom nevertheless, available to all.

Thx for the comment. I'd say the right to fork prevents the bad things from happening. If you are ever displeased with what the steward of an open source project is doing with it (be it Eucalyptus or something else), you can take the source code and fork it. Happens all the time (OpenOffice, MySQL, Android, etc.).

We believe in Linux, KVM and Eucalyptus - all production-ready open source software freely available to anyone. Just download and get going. - If you have chosen to use closed source software like VMware's, then as Dishwasha points out there are commercial plug-ins available for Eucalyptus.

Marten Mickos
CEO, Eucalyptus Systems

All,

This is a great discussion! I am glad to be back on /.

As often with press, I was not quoted verbatim. I stated my observation that in the world of free and open source software (FOSS), you find some people (some very few people, to be precise) who are judgmental about how other people perceive or act on open source. So when you have a certain governance model, business model, or development model, there will typically be some people who will loudly rule it out as wrong or improper or something. But I didn't say that I have anything against that, and I don't.

It's one of the strengths of the FOSS world. Differences in view are aired publicly, and many times (although not always) a higher level of understanding, or a new thinking will emerge.

We need to keep these discussions going, because as the world moves into the cloud, those same principles of openness that were developed for software code will have to somehow be applied on APIs and on data too.

Marten

Nope, not me. I have not railed against Sun or Oracle, nor written open letters to the community. On the contrary. At Sun I was in charge of the MySQL business. When Oracle then acquired Sun, there was nothing wrong in it. I can admit that I personally did not specifically want MySQL to end up with Oracle, but that's just my personal view. Their acquisition of Sun (and of MySQL) was perfectly legitimate. I was invited as an expert witness to the European Commission and I told them the same.

Could be that you are mistaking me for one of the founders of MySQL. I was not a founder. I was the CEO.

Marten Mickos

yep, including the Eucalyptus open source cloud platform

Thx for the comments on MySQL as part of Sun. The MySQL business is growing faster now than before (measured in revenues) and we are the fastest growing major DBMS business in the world. So, although someone could claim I am biased, I think it is fair to say that the acquisition made sense from a pure revenue growth perspective.

Additionally, Sun is selling hardware to MySQL users and customers - servers that provide a performance boost over what people use today.

Thirdly there are synergies between MySQL and Sun's various software products - especially Glassfish, NetBeans, ZFS, Identity Manager, etc. A web shop may not need all of those, but large corporations see a benefit in getting many products from the same vendor.

Still there is no denying that Sun has major challenges today. We are hard at work fixing the problems. And that's why I keep following the discussions on /. - there is always some great suggestion from someone that we can make good use of.

Marten Mickos
(formerly CEO at MySQL AB, now head of Sun's Database Group)