Alexis Richardson wrote:
The notion of taking API X as a 'starting point' is based on it being:
* open (licensing) * concrete (unambiguous, discussable, implementable) * modifiable (a licensing issue) * extensible (eg to add functionality or integration points)
Sun and GG (and EH) meet those criteria. Given the Sun documents we could take the GG and EH work and "make something better". We could also take the OCCI work and make something better still.
This process works when multiple users and implementers support it. That's what I am looking for. The keyword is multiple. Anything else is just hot air.
This works as a process, and we would support it starting from any of the Sun, GG or EH APIs. In all cases there would be some work to do - for example on storage, EH does not yet support non-persistent "scratch" drives for an instance, GG does not support multiple drives on a server, and I'm not sure if Sun supports persistent drives which survive a server being stopped. If we go this route, we must to take Sam and Gary's concerns regarding patents seriously. It is not sufficient for the API _specification_ to be under Creative Commons if all implementers will still have to pay patent royalties to a vendor when they implement it. "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" licensing is also not sufficient - as Sam and Gary have said there would need to be a "Royalty-Free" patent pledge stating that the future OCCI API will not require any licence or payment. The patent situation is currently unclear. Fortunately however, we have representation from all three of Sun, GG and EH on this list, so OGF can extract the necessary royalty-free patent pledges! Tim / Thijs - can you arrange for Sun to make a royalty-free patent pledge regarding the Sun Cloud APIs, so that OCCI could consider building from them? Randy - if you are still the right person at GoGrid (http://cloudscaling.com/blog/administrivia/my-gogrid-status) then can you arrange for GoGrid to make a royalty-free patent pledge if OCCI were to build from your APIs? myself (ElasticHosts) - I'm happy to commit here and now. If OCCI wants to build from the EH APIs then we will immediately license them under Create Commons or any similar license. We have no patents covering our APIs, and I'm willing to sign any royalty-free patent pledge that OCCI gives me. Cheers, Richard.