Sorry for the TOFU. I agree with Thomas. Images should always be made independent of a cloud and provided for download which also provides security auditing potentials for users. Not sure why Debian Cloud has not done that yet, but in any case we really should look at doing this before any press release on public clouds (or any type of compute cloud).
Ubuntu also has the advantage of systems like Launchpad to do building and provide packages and images without the need of a user. These kind of considerations are important for a proper offering and structure. Perhaps we should look at a consensus on how the images should be built on an official level and released as an .img (and compressed etc.) before going further. Best, Chris (flaccid) On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 5:28 PM, Thomas Goirand <[email protected]> wrote: > On 03/13/2013 06:32 AM, Charles Plessy wrote: > > Le Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 02:26:50PM +0100, Francesca Ciceri a écrit : > >> <p> > >> As you may know, starting with the upcoming stable release > <q>Wheezy</q>, > >> Debian will <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120425";>make > >> it easier for its users to deploy private clouds</a>. > >> As a free software project, we care deeply about the freedom of our > users > >> and we recommend to them to run their own private clouds whenever > possible. > >> </p> > > Hi Francesca, > > > > as discussed earlier, I strongly object the recommendation to our users > "to run > > their own private clouds whenever possible". > Hi Charles, Francesca, & Zack, > > I agree with Charles here. We shouldn't recommend one way or another, > we should only push our users to use cloud based on free software, > rather than proprietary ones. Using public or private cloud is only an > administrator's choice, based on cost, security, usage, etc., and it > shouldn't be our concern. > > There are many service providers using free suites like Openstack, > and contributing to the liberation of the cloud: of course Rackspace, > but also GridDynamics, Dreamhost, eNovance, HP, CloudWatt, > Internap, and of course many more smaller players, including myself > (eg: GPLHost). The list must be quite huge for Eucalyptus users as > well. It is that kind of services, IMO, which we should push for. > > Many hosting companies (some listed above, including me...) may > setup what we call a private cloud (eg: a bunch of physical computers > which only one user will be able to use), using proprietary or free > solution. The choice of public, private, hybrid, etc. should be none of > our concern. But we should recommend the use free software in the > cloud, so that it is at least possible to setup and operate cloud > computing with the very same software which the hosting company > uses. > > I am, in fact, a bit bothered that we are making a press release > announcing the availability of Debian on the biggest, proprietary > platforms, especially knowing that no effort has been made yet to > provide the same kind of image for the free software which we > provide in Debian (eg: why aren't these images available on the > Debian (ftp) servers to download, so that they could be used by > Openstack and Eucalyptus users??? I asked for this multiple times). > > It has been quite some time that Ubuntu is shipping images from: > https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/ > > If you look for example, in here: > https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/release/ > there is both the AMI IDs in AWS, and the files themselves available > for download, and in many formats (including ovf, img, and tar.gz). > This is what Debian should do, and also provide any cloud provider > to be able to publish his information on that kind of page. I feel > bothered that Debian advertizes for huge companies like Microsoft > and Amazon, and I wish we find a better way of advertizing about > our cloud work, without giving any advantage to any commercial > companies. I wish I had enough time to work on this myself as well. > > Anyways, here's how I would rephrase it: > > As a free software project, we care deeply about the freedom of our users > and we recommend to them to run on clouds which are deployed using open > source and free software only whenever possible, so that our users also > have the freedom to run a cloud infrastructure themselves if they wish > or need to. > > > Charles, do you think it is better this way? > > Cheers, > > Thomas > > P.S: Francesca, are you registered to the debian-cloud list? > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > [email protected] > Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] > > -- *Chris Fordham* *Cloud Solutions Engineer* RightScale Inc. Direct: +61 2 9037 2780 US Callers: +1 805 243 0252 Cell: +61 423 003 417 Skype: chris.fordham.rs Email: [email protected]
