On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> By bounding the handful of problems that we *know* we need to
solve that
> pertain to "cloud".
Which is *exactly* why I think that trying to propose some general
purpose "cloud" group is an effort that's just going to be filled with
hot air. Which is exactly what happens on *every single cloud group
that exists today on the internet*. And it happens because of a lack
of consensus around what the term means. I have one meaning, you have
another, dhuff has a third, and so on.
Except, of course, that we've actually got an initial set of tasks
defined. Whodathunkit?
> There can be no doubt that "getting Fedora images to work on
EC2" falls
> under "cloud".
If we're saying this is the purpose of the group, then let's say it.
Actually, that's not what I'm saying at all, Jeremy. I'm saying that this
is a great initial goal that we can all agree on, while we also have a
place to discuss other efforts that may (or may not) have commonalities to
this effort.
Don't tip toe around it or try to make it out to be some general
overarching, incredible effort. Doing this and *just this alone* is
more than enough reason for existence. And by constraining the scope,
yes, it means some people feel like "their need" isn't being covered.
But that's okay. They can coordinate the people interested in their
need. The nice thing is that then there's some way that we can say that
a group is successful.
> There can be little doubt that "getting Fedora images to work on other
> public clouds" also falls under cloud, and one hopes that the processes
> bear some resemblance to one another.
bwahaha. bwahahaha. bwahahahahahahahha. :-)
One cloud != another cloud. There are pretty fundamental differences
in their operating models that aren't something you just abstract
away. And those differences are actually kind of important and part
of why people will choose one cloud provider over another. The
differences end up having a distinct impact on everything from systems
management to how you want to build out apps on top of them. Those
differences become even more pronounced at the level of "running the
OS under the constraints imposed by the provider's environment".
You may be right. But guess what? You may also *not* be right! And I'd
rather actually *explore* this idea, instead of making an a priori
assumption that IT WON'T WORK!!!
I'd actually change this statement a little bit. I want to see
people
I know using EC2 to solve actual problems able to in good conscience
use Fedora without having to worry about it being several year old
versions of Fedora. The sort of second level on top of that would
then to being able to use Fedora in Fedora-y ways rather than the
bastardized ways that you end up having to do some stuff with EC2
today. Which the encompasses a huge amount of stuff including have
kernels/ramdisks that can be used, Fedora images actually being
available, it being possible to build one's own Fedora-based image for
your own problems, etc.
Stating it like this means that we have a _real_ concrete thing to
target. Not some ephemeral, undefined "cloud" to argue about what is
constituted by it.
See, this is why this conversation is moving along IN TWO DIFFERENT
THREADS. It's possible to focus on one set of tasks, while having other
conversations that are not directly related.
--g
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