I like paradoxes. Paradoxes of all kinds always facinate me. They enforce you to think and often reveal deep understanding on how things work. You can read my analysis of the Paradox of the Cloud in an earlier post.
This is why I was amused to read Glyn Moody's blog post about a Microsoft's job description.
Microsoft wanted to recruit somebody to fill the “Linux and Open Office Compete Lead, US Subsidiary (CSI Lead)”. Glyn was concentrating on what CSI job description meant for OpenOffice.org. But, I want to stress here the paradox that is apparently inherent in how Microsoft treats the Open Source community.
According to Moody's blog post the job ad contains the following words: "The core mission of CSI is to win share against Linux and OpenOffice.org by designing and driving marketing programs, changing perceptions, engaging with Open Source communities and organizations, and drive internal readiness on how to compete with Commercial Linux and participate with Open Source Communities."
What caught my eye is the paradox of "win share against Linux and OpenOffice.org by ... engaging with Open Source communities and participate in Open Source Communities". Linux and OpenOffice.org are Open Source communities, among other things. So, how can Microsoft engage and participate with Open Source communities and act against them?
I think this paradox is not coincidental. Microsoft's engagement with Open Source communities is not aimed for the better of Open Source, but for the better of Microsoft against Open Source. It doesn't have to be like that, just look at the engagement of RedHat and IBM in Open Source communities and you can see that a good engagement is not against something but for something.
The only one that can solve this paradox is Micrsoft itself, and until that happens, Open Source communities should not trust Microsoft.
Khen Ofek
Showing posts with label Paradoxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paradoxes. Show all posts
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, November 27, 2009
Paradox of the Cloud
The question which everybody seem busy trying to answer is "What is Cloud Computing?"
There are many answers and opinions about it. The answers are influenced by a lot of forces and my intention is to analyze this question in some future posts.
But, as good philosophers, before we go into the exact definition of Cloud Computing, we should ask ourselves "Is Cloud possible?"
Now, this seems like a provocative question, but I am really serious about the question. The problem comes from a famous paradox that is sometimes called "Paradox of the heap" and the Greeks called it "sorites paradox". I really like paradoxes since they force me to think and often reveal deep things about the fundamental structure of theories.
The paradox is described in Wikipedia as follows:
"One might construct the argument, using premises, as follows:
1,000,000 grains of sand is a heap of sand (Premise 1)
A heap of sand minus one grain is still a heap. (Premise 2)
Repeated applications of Premise 2 (each time starting with one less grain), eventually forces one to accept the conclusion that a heap may be composed of just one grain of sand (and consequently, if one grain of sand is still a heap, then removing that one grain of sand to leave no grains at all still leaves a heap of sand)."
Obviously, if you replace heap with Cloud and grain of sands with droplets you will get the "Paradox of the Cloud". I don't think we will regard one droplet as a cloud or one computing node as a Computing Cloud. Note that the paradox is described going down to show that the problem is not a problem of induction. One can also describe the paradox going up from one droplet.
This paradox is an instance of a class of logical paradoxes which deal with vagueness. It is not a coincidence we have such a paradox for the Computing Cloud. The Computing Cloud is also a vague concept and everyone dealing with it is using this vagueness to pull the concept in the direction that suits himself. For example, Amazon is taking the Cloud to the Infrastructure as a Service, while Google is taking the Cloud to the Platform as a Service. There are some companies today that are thinking about Industrial Cloud and there is the famous Private Cloud where the borderlines between cluster and Cloud are really getting foggier.
All this pulling and pushing is very nice from the marketing point of view, but "The paradox of the Cloud" is of a logical kind and marketing have a small chance of answering logical questions. If anything, marketing and business are better in raising logical questions not answering them.
There are many proposed resolutions to the Sorites Paradox. Most of them involve all kinds of fancy logics. These logics are very interesting from logical and philosophical point of view, but I don't think they are interesting for the practice of Cloud Computing.
There is one proposed resolution that can be interesting to the practicing of Cloud Computing. The resolution is labeled "Group Consensus". This proposed resolution claims that a collection of droplets is as much a Cloud as the proportion of people who believe it to be so. That is very interesting since it actually brings the Community as a resolution to the paradox, and not just any Community, but one that reaches decisions through consensus.
The conclusion is very important, to solve the Paradox of the Cloud we need a strong community which defines its concept through consensus. This brings the importance of Open APIs and open field to all players. As bigger and as open the Cloud community will be the Paradox of the Cloud will be solved in a better way.
Khen Ofek
There are many answers and opinions about it. The answers are influenced by a lot of forces and my intention is to analyze this question in some future posts.
But, as good philosophers, before we go into the exact definition of Cloud Computing, we should ask ourselves "Is Cloud possible?"
Now, this seems like a provocative question, but I am really serious about the question. The problem comes from a famous paradox that is sometimes called "Paradox of the heap" and the Greeks called it "sorites paradox". I really like paradoxes since they force me to think and often reveal deep things about the fundamental structure of theories.
The paradox is described in Wikipedia as follows:
"One might construct the argument, using premises, as follows:
1,000,000 grains of sand is a heap of sand (Premise 1)
A heap of sand minus one grain is still a heap. (Premise 2)
Repeated applications of Premise 2 (each time starting with one less grain), eventually forces one to accept the conclusion that a heap may be composed of just one grain of sand (and consequently, if one grain of sand is still a heap, then removing that one grain of sand to leave no grains at all still leaves a heap of sand)."
Obviously, if you replace heap with Cloud and grain of sands with droplets you will get the "Paradox of the Cloud". I don't think we will regard one droplet as a cloud or one computing node as a Computing Cloud. Note that the paradox is described going down to show that the problem is not a problem of induction. One can also describe the paradox going up from one droplet.
This paradox is an instance of a class of logical paradoxes which deal with vagueness. It is not a coincidence we have such a paradox for the Computing Cloud. The Computing Cloud is also a vague concept and everyone dealing with it is using this vagueness to pull the concept in the direction that suits himself. For example, Amazon is taking the Cloud to the Infrastructure as a Service, while Google is taking the Cloud to the Platform as a Service. There are some companies today that are thinking about Industrial Cloud and there is the famous Private Cloud where the borderlines between cluster and Cloud are really getting foggier.
All this pulling and pushing is very nice from the marketing point of view, but "The paradox of the Cloud" is of a logical kind and marketing have a small chance of answering logical questions. If anything, marketing and business are better in raising logical questions not answering them.
There are many proposed resolutions to the Sorites Paradox. Most of them involve all kinds of fancy logics. These logics are very interesting from logical and philosophical point of view, but I don't think they are interesting for the practice of Cloud Computing.
There is one proposed resolution that can be interesting to the practicing of Cloud Computing. The resolution is labeled "Group Consensus". This proposed resolution claims that a collection of droplets is as much a Cloud as the proportion of people who believe it to be so. That is very interesting since it actually brings the Community as a resolution to the paradox, and not just any Community, but one that reaches decisions through consensus.
The conclusion is very important, to solve the Paradox of the Cloud we need a strong community which defines its concept through consensus. This brings the importance of Open APIs and open field to all players. As bigger and as open the Cloud community will be the Paradox of the Cloud will be solved in a better way.
Khen Ofek
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
