Linux Foundation to host CloudOpen to mitigate open source cloud war

Rarely one to take sides, the Linux Foundation has announced that it will sponsor a CloudOpen event later this summer to support all open source cloud projects.

And yes, supporters of OpenStack and leaders of CloudStack will participate. CloudOpen, which will be a vendor-neutral event taking place at LinuxCon North America on August 29-31 in San Diego.

The program committee includes representatives from CloudStack backers such as Citrix and Eucalyptus, as well as ISVs and OEMs rallying behind Openstack including IBM, Red Hat and the Openstack project.

Sponsors include leading open source cloud backers including Canonical, Citrix, Dell, Eucalyptus Systems, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, NEC, Puppet Labs and SUSE.

The so-called open source cloud war kicked off last month when Citrix -- a previous supporter of OpenStack -- donated its Cloud.com CloudStack code to the Apache Software Foundation, which released it under the Apache License 2.0.

Citrix and other CloudStack backers maintain that its Amazon EC2-compatible APIs makes its open source stack more enterprise friendly, while OpenStack supporters view the move as a last ditch effort by Citrix to engender support around its expensive, acquired but faltering cloud stack.

The presence of two open source cloud projects is always good for competition but it may require enterprises to decide whether the Apache Software Foundation's Amazon Web Service EC2-compatible CloudStack, or Red Hat-IBM-Canonical backed OpenStack, best serves their needs.