endlich himmelblau by extranoise, used under CC-BY license
So Red Hat is going to sell hosted servers in EC2. (see also) With my recent focus, this prompts an obvious question.
Given that EC2 is basically hosted Xen (a defacto open standard), so that you can apparently fairly trivially move a VM from your machine to EC2 to some other Xen-running server, and that you can apparently access (both upload and download) your VMs trivially via a robust API, does that make EC2 an open service?
I’m not completely sure what the answer to the question is, but I’ll at least say that this appears to be meaningfully different than most hosted services. I can get my data in and out, use the data on a Free operating system with minimal modification, and I can maintain my identity by easily ‘hiding’ EC2 usage behind my own URLs. That may not be ideal but it goes a long, long way, or so it seems to me.
Some other perhaps-relevant details:
- obviously, source is not available. Not clear it would be of any use to mere mortals anyway, and we do have the Xen source. Still, not satisfactory to everyone. Obvious question: are Amazon’s services so complex, their hardware so expensive, and their skill so deep, that they could maintain competitive advantage without proprietary source code?
- Amazon’s paid services give you 15 days before a changed TOS becomes binding. This is nice, given that the standard is ‘we change it and voila, it is binding.’
- they actually promise to maintain your data for certain periods if for some reason the service is suspended or terminated. Again, the standard is ‘we can nuke your data whereever, whenever.’ However, a casual read of the TOS suggests that they reserve the right not to give your data back to you even if they don’t delete it immediately. Odd. (I’d prefer to see a guarantee that data retrieval services will be available as long as they hold the data, even if all other services are suspended/terminated.)
- uses language I wish I saw more often: “we will endeavor to do ___ but shall have no liability for the manner in which we may do so or if we fail to do so.” Not that I’m a huge fan of empty promises (which this is) but it is surprising how many TOSs refuse to even go this far.
- explicitly notes that the user retains all rights in their own data and software which is uploaded.
“obviously, source is not available. Not clear it would be of any use to mere mortals anyway, and we do have the Xen source. Still, not satisfactory to everyone. Obvious question: are Amazon’s services so complex, their hardware so expensive, and their skill so deep, that they could maintain competitive advantage without proprietary source code?”
Are you referring to the “EC2” source?
[…] RH to Host in EC2–Does it Blend?^W^W^W Is It Open? Destroy All Androids! Who Wants to Kill the OLPC Project? Covering the Reiser Trial Sun's Growth Problem May Be Open Source, Says a Former Sun Executive Squashfs Aiming For Mainline Kernel Linux Backups For Real People, Part 2 Recruiting Software Talent Dell To Ship PCs With SLED 10 Linux In China What's Up at the OpenDocument Foundation? :RH to Host in EC2–Does it Blend?^W^W^W Is It Open? RH to Host in EC2–Does it Blend?^W^W^W Is It Open?Nov 9, 2007, 01 :00 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (21 reads)(Other stories by Luis Villa) “So Red Hat is going to sell hosted servers in EC2. With my recent focus, this prompts an obvious question. “Given that EC2 is basically hosted Xen (a defacto open standard), so that you can apparently fairly trivially move a VM from your machine to EC2 to some other Xen-running server, and that you can apparently access (both upload and download) your VMs trivially via a robust API, does that make EC2 an open service…?” Complete Story […]
“Obvious question: are Amazon’s services so complex, their hardware so expensive, and their skill so deep, that they could maintain competitive advantage without proprietary source code?” As Matt Sayler asked, source code for what? In any case, don’t underestimate the competitive advantage that can accrue from deep expertise in how to manage extremely large data center installations with high reliability and low cost. Only part of that expertise is likely to be embodied in code, and the code in question is not necessarily code that directly touches users (for example, code for server monitoring, provisioning, etc.).
Yeah, I meant the EC2 source.
Frank, I agree completely, actually. By asking the question, I meant to suggest that it is very plausible that open sourcing every line necessary to clone EC2 would not have any negative impact on Amazon.