SynApps The Open Source and Gadget blog

... if the data formats involved are really what the cloud manufacturers are using - which they don't. Everybody runs their silos, open source or not. And data is bound to them.

In an article Matt Asay claims we should get the Open Source Initiative involved and embrace OASIS to open up the cloud. I do not think that organisations are what drives open source. 

Here is another aproach: we build a stack that is not a silo. 

We are working to get all data in Open-Xchange exposed and readable by consumers and software alike. The underlying motivation is that standardization in the software world is stone age. And that it is stone age not because of lack of sophistication, but rather the opposite. People in the software industry have been working for 40 years to now require massive infrastructure services to transfer a set of contact data from one silo to another.

We will try something very different.

WYSIWYG has transformed the way we edit texts - html, anybody? :) - dramatically. Why not have computers digest the same data that human consumers get to see? And vice versa? And enable web designers to incorporate them. And have services that are configurable by end users. And have these services provided by an open source stack that everybody can deploy.

This is going to be different from conventional open services, where everybody uses their own data formats, calls them open, and expects everybody else to digest this "standard" - and get rich along the way. Eat your own dogfood has always apealed to me to be a good groundrule. I learned a little about cooking by adhering to it ...

Open-Xchange will transport that quite literally to software. Open-Xchange Server will be able to publish and subscribe data in formats readable to humans as well as the machine. And aside from building a distributed environment (cloud?) delivering services, its use will not be exclusive to people running Open-Xchange. To start with, all the information published will be readable with a browser. It will contain Microformats. And Open-Xchange will be as capable to digest that data.

Rafael and I will be demoing a prototype at OSBC. Come by and have a look!