Comments on: There’s a new open source cloud in town. Meet Apache CloudStack

By: Tim Wessels

Tim Wessels — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:02:37 +0000

Having more rather fewer cloud building stacks is a good thing. Citrix had to resolve their ownership of CloudStack and their participation in OpenStack. They brokered a solution to the ownership issue by handing governance over to the Apache Foundation with the hope that the Apache Foundation developer community might become interested in writing code for CloudStack. Citrix also needed a quicker way to compete with VMware and possibly Eucalyptus in the market for building public/private clouds. If you take their comments at face value, CloudStack was the proper alternative for them to choose, which would necessarily reduce their participation in OpenStack. OpenStack has a lot of momentum and lots of support. Citrix’s focus on CloudStack is not going to materially affect OpenStack. And if Citrix’s decision works out well for CloudStack, everyone will have more than one alternative for building public/private clouds. In the long term, every surviving cloud stack will have to be successful in terms of architecture, ecosystem and API support.

By: guest

guest — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:40:06 +0000

CloudStack was already a commercial opensource project. This announcement is about Critix shedding responsibility for a codebase it doesn’t need to maintain. I’m really having trouble seeing what this says about OpenStack in any way. OpenStack already supports the AWS APIs as well as its own. Eucalyptus copied the AWS APIs from day 1. Nobody can license the Amazon APIs, and nobody will.

By: Eirikur Hrafnsson

Eirikur Hrafnsson — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:02:54 +0000

Actually GreenQloud e.g. wrote chunks of the AWS compatibility layer (CloudBridge) so you are wrong on at least the community contributions part. Then judging Cloud.com on a successful funding and exit strategy seems pretty cynical.

Everyone should welcome the competition in this space as it will benefit all users in the future. Citrix didn’t dump anything on the Apache foundation and implying that deminishes the massive amount of work and care people have put into CloudStack for the last few years.

Anyway if you don’t trust Citrix you should be happy that the project now belongs to Apache. Cloudstack and Openstack both have their strengths and my guess is that their communities will be the ones to start merging or using both of the projects to their advantage.

cheers
Eirikur, CEO GreenQloud

By: Boris Renski

Boris Renski — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:29:26 +0000

I see this clearly as a reactive move to a) their failure to become a dominant player in the OpenStack community (a testament to true vendor independence of the project BTW); b) pressures to salvage a 200M acquisition in a meaningful way.

In general, I perceive CloudStack, as Citrix’s skunk works open source cloud project from day one that got ultimately derailed and screwed up by OpenStack community momentum. Cloud.com founder and CEO – Sheng Liang – was also the founder and CTO of Teros Networks, a Web security company that was acquired by the very same Citrix just a few years before Cloud.com was founded. Acquisition by Citrix was the key part of the Cloud.com business plan that helped them raise their $17 million in VC money. After OpenStack launch, things got very confusing for them, they made some bad decisions and now ultimately dumped the project to the Apache foundation in hopes that it will make a difference.

They have already announced cloud stack would be open source before, yet have received zero outside contributions to date. At this point Citrix has a spotty history when it comes to open source. Open source is built on trust, and they are hard to trust right now. Having burning bridges at their last two communities (xen / Linux and now OpenStack), it is going to be big challenge for them to revive CloudStack from its present semi-dead state.

By: Randy Bias

Randy Bias — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:46:40 +0000

It’s not clear that CloudStack has any more right to claim AWS compatibility than any other stack. Eucalyptus, CloudStack, and OpenStack all has AWS compatible APIs. All of them have a deficit in true AWS architectural compatibility.

It’s also a lot of hand-waving to claim that CloudStack is more mature. As the builder of one of CloudStack’s top 3 clouds, KT (Korea Telecom), I would say that CloudStack is about on parity with core functionality, ahead on billing and UI, and behind on community involvement as an open source project.

By: Joe Arnold

Joe Arnold — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:30:16 +0000

Deciding to open source under the Apache 2 license is a natural step for CloudStack. While a version of CloudStack has been available under the GPL, it was never a very active community. For CloudStack to succeed as an open source project, it needs a significant engagement from its community, which does not come overnight from just changing the licensing terms. Building a community takes time, effort and engagement.

So what may this mean for the OpenStack projects? For the OpenStack project as a whole, which has some overlap with CloudStack, developers and organizations now have one more open source alternative to consider. Organizations select combinations of technology that meet their particular requirements, which will differ by use-case and industry. While the OpenStack project has made tremendous progress – both on the underlying technology and by creating a huge ecosystem of developers and contributors, there will be use-cases where CloudStack may be an option to consider. Ultimately, end-users and developers will decide which they prefer.

For CloudStack to succeed as an open source project, it needs a significant engagement from its community, which does not come overnight from just changing the licensing terms. Building a community takes time, effort and engagement.

http://swiftstack.com/blog/2012/04/03/cloudstack-going-apache-2/