"Rackspace (a noted high-end hosting provider) and NASA recently
announced a joint open source endeavor called OpenStack. The
project aims to merge cloud computing technologies from both
organizations into one common, open cloud computing platform.
"The rationale behind the Rackspace and NASA teams sharing their
code on a project is simple. Neither of them is really a software
development shop -- they specialize in different areas -- and the
current cloud computing software they have was grown in-house
either to satisfy internal requirements (NASA) or to offer a
solution in a competitive market (Rackspace).
"In the case of Rackspace, they would like to see projects move
away from proprietary, locked-in computing platforms (such as
Amazon S3 or the Google App Engine) toward a common open
standard."
