If you're following cloud computing, you couldn't have missed the discussion about the "Open Cloud Manifesto" initiated by Reuven Cohen and reportedly supported by IBM, Sun and several other large and smaller vendors. The noise became a fevered pitch when Steven Martin of Microsoft wrote a scathing blog post about the Manifesto, essentially claiming that it was made to support the interests of certain large vendors (I imagine he means IBM) and that Microsoft wasn't given the opportunity to participate in the document's wording, but instead was asked to sign it as-is.
If you missed it all, here is some of the reporting and commentary on the topic that summarizes the issue:
- Reuven Cohen: Introducing the Open Cloud Manifesto
- Steven Martin: Moving Toward an Open Process on Cloud Computing Interoperability
- Krishnan Subramanian: Open Cloud Manifesto - The Fight Begins
- Reuven Cohen: Thank You Microsoft
- John Willis: Microsoft Was Out of Line
- Larry Dignan: Amazon Web Services: No Open Cloud Manifesto for us
- Larry Dignan: The Open Cloud Manifesto: Publish It Already
As the last link from Larry Dignan tells you, the actual document has been a big secret, and reporters and industry analysts who have received it are apparently under embargo to not publish it until Monday, March 30.
I received the document from four different sources and am under no obligation to keep it secret, so I am happy to publish it here for the first time. Please comment with your thoughts. As you can see, there's much ado about nothing. I am not quite sure why the people behind it want to keep it such a big secret. There's nothing controversial about it, in my opinion.
Download the Open Cloud Manifesto as PDF.
UPDATE: This post and the document have received a lot of attention. I previously hosted the document on the Scribd service. It has been viewed more than 2,500 5,500 times on Scribd, last I checked. I have decided, however, to remove the document from Scribd and only post the PDF as a link from this blog. Before any conspiracy theories emerge, I have only done this because of my dissatisfaction with the Scribd service -- I have not been asked to do so by anyone.[At this moment, I can't actually remove the document because Scribd is down. See what I'm saying?]
