6th Edition

Considering Open Source in Cloud Strategies

Cloud computing presents itself as the ineluctable near future of IT. It is thus no surprise that"Making Europe Cloud Active" (N. Kroes, 27 September 2012) is one of the major political strategies of the European Commission and that the success of OpenStack project (Open Source Cloud Computing Software) moves beyond traditional Open Source companies. It seems quite undeniable indeed that cloud computing is reshaping the whole IT business, and has a great impact on FOSS use and exploitation as well.

From a FOSS perspective, Cloud computing has sometimes been depicted by free software advocates as a "trap" set for the careless... and it is still perceived by some as a return of the proprietary platforms. It is true that key vendors of traditional "proprietary" software currently profile themselves as providers of the best FOSS-friendly cloud services (Microsoft has recently launched "VM Depot" to make linux-based virtual machines deployment to Azure easier) and suggest some new ways to accommodate Free and proprietary software.

In this sense, their role is also appreciable as they industrialize, and thus disseminate widely, Open Source community software. Meanwhile, mobile operating systems (and among them, the open source ones) are more and more moving towards Cloud computing and successful open source cloud operating systems have been recently designed, such as Open Stack. Consequently, FOSS sponsors and traditional commercial providers are updating FOSS definition and practices in order to adjust the desired freedoms. In the context of cloud, it is wise not to forget that "there are huge benefits of open source and open standards. When software is not based on open technologies, it is harder to let them work together, to modify and customize them and harder to change providers" (N. Kroes, 14 December 2012). It is therefore time to analyze the impact of the cloud on free & open source software and its legal consequences, in terms of licensing and compliance.

Again selection of a majority of the speakers will be done on basis of a call for papers that started on 17th June 2013 and will end on 16th September 2013. The papers should be max. 500 words long and describe briefly the presentation and its relevance with the objectives and the topic of this year (summarized below).

The papers should be sent by the 16th of September 2013 at the latest, via our ONLINE FORM or by email to one of the co-organisers. They will be selected the following week and confirmations will be sent by the 20th of September 2013.