Image via CrunchBase

The Open Source Business Foundation e.V., the European network for the Open Source Industry, just launched an “Open Cloud Business Initiative” (OCBI). The goal of the OCBI is to promote the principle of openness, which is responsible for the success of the Open Source Software movement, in the area of the cloud: the future lies in the Open Cloud – especially in a business context.

The Open Source Business Foundation eV (OSBF) lays out the following six principles under their “Open Cloud Future Initiative”:

• All user and meta data of a service are presented in an open standard format.
• The functionality of a service is made available via open standard interfaces.
• Any service consumer can use the service without discrimination.
• Ownership and access rights can be determined by the user for all data they process.
• The service provider respects data rights as granted by the user / service consumer.
• Open Cloud Services collectively decide upon the appropriate processes / infrastructure for all changes / extensions of the service as a community.

The project white paper can be found here: OSBF – Principles of an Open Cloud.

Image by freefotouk via Flickr

Participating Companies are

• Open Xchange
• Microsoft
• Talend
• Suse
• Zimory

I welcome this initiative whole-heartedly. Independence from Cloud providers is only possible with open standards. Otherwise a company/agency is locked into the offering of that single provider.

When clouds are shut instead of open are we dealing with clouds at all? Or should we call them icicles?

Related articles

•  OSBF: Open Cloud (www.osbf.eu)
• Interest in deploying open-source clouds is rising–survey (news.cnet.com)
• First commercial OpenStack-based cloud compute service announced (h-online.com)
• Open Cloud Computing Expert to Speak at Open World Forum (prweb.com)
• imabonehead: Open Source Clouds: Linux Distributions Choose Sides | TalkinCloud (talkincloud.com)
• Red Hat finds its feet in cloud gold rush (go.theregister.com)