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The AWS API is an INTERFACE to a proprietary system which runs closed source code. The code that runs the API endpoints is also closed source. Whether or not

The AWS API is an INTERFACE to a proprietary system which runs closed source code. The code that runs the API endpoints is also closed source. Whether or not the SDKs for the AWS API are open or not is irrelevant to this discussion (not that you said something to the contrary, but I'm covering my bases here). Eucalyptus has no more or less 'embraced' the AWS API methods than OpenStack has - save for a bare few methods that have different connotations in OpenStack land than they do with Euca: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Nova/APIFeatureComparison https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Nova/APIFeatureComparison. The 'political battles' you are citing in OpenStack are actually a bunch of cage rattlers who are promoting their own interests in their respective service offerings. Going into a company that uses AWS for infrastructure and trying to pitch them on OpenStack is a long, drawn out process. Selling new technology is hard. The lowest common denominator benefit that OpenStack provides is an open and transparent code base that can be modified and utilized by anyone. It's that openness that allows the few people using features like VPC and autoscaling to write some simple code to do deployments on whatever they like. Honestly, it's a handful of lines of code at the most for any given method. Saying you 'lose' feature functionality is simply a rationalization for attacking the OpenStack movement.

jsmthrowaway 13y ago
Rackspace pitched OpenStack hard to competitors when they released it. I mean hard. They were practically begging various folks to give them a moment to discuss switching entire hosting services over to OpenStack. The strategic play was, and remains, fairly obvious: if you remove feature differentiation the market competes on other differentiators (Rackspace wants to compete on support, most likely). Given that historical context of OpenStack's origin and not-so-subtle strategy, it's interesting to see such a dismissal of hosters that still want to compete on features. Think about it. If you launch a hosting shop today and adopt OpenStack, you will be able to offer a similar feature set to Rackspace right off the bat. You then have to begin work on how to differentiate yourself feature-wise, while meanwhile not really competing with Rackspace because it's the same offering. OpenStack tells us that Rackspace wants all hosters to look largely equivalent technically. I'm pretty sure what's where the project came from. Now, however, it appears to be evolving into a community effort to compete with Amazon, which is smart on Rackspace's part: by making a community effort, Rackspace (and everybody who runs OpenStack) get to capitalize on the work of the community to build an Amazon-like system, since such a system would require a significant investment on Rackspace's part and they likely don't have the people to do it. The danger, however, is that we'll end up with a hosting industry with dozens of AWS clones. Regardless, in the broad, virtualization was our crutch until Linux containers caught up to what zone/jail admins have known for decades: there are far more efficient ways to share a machine than virtualizing an entire OS. The smart minds are focusing on containers now. I know OpenStack just implemented Docker support in Nova, but I don't think OpenStack models container computing well.

jsmthrowaway 13y ago

Rackspace pitched OpenStack hard to competitors when they released it. I mean hard. They were practically begging various folks to give them a moment to discuss switching entire hosting services over to OpenStack. The strategic play was, and remains, fairly obvious: if you remove feature differentiation the market competes on other differentiators (Rackspace wants to compete on support, most likely). Given that historical context of OpenStack's origin and not-so-subtle strategy, it's interesting to see such a dismissal of hosters that still want to compete on features. Think about it. If you launch a hosting shop today and adopt OpenStack, you will be able to offer a similar feature set to Rackspace right off the bat. You then have to begin work on how to differentiate yourself feature-wise, while meanwhile not really competing with Rackspace because it's the same offering. OpenStack tells us that Rackspace wants all hosters to look largely equivalent technically. I'm pretty sure what's where the project came from. Now, however, it appears to be evolving into a community effort to compete with Amazon, which is smart on Rackspace's part: by making a community effort, Rackspace (and everybody who runs OpenStack) get to capitalize on the work of the community to build an Amazon-like system, since such a system would require a significant investment on Rackspace's part and they likely don't have the people to do it. The danger, however, is that we'll end up with a hosting industry with dozens of AWS clones. Regardless, in the broad, virtualization was our crutch until Linux containers caught up to what zone/jail admins have known for decades: there are far more efficient ways to share a machine than virtualizing an entire OS. The smart minds are focusing on containers now. I know OpenStack just implemented Docker support in Nova, but I don't think OpenStack models container computing well.