OpenSource
In a product world, user freedoms were protected for many years by making the source code available under copyright licenses that allowed users to take it, run it, modify it to suit their needs and then redistribute it with or without modifications to other users. At one end of the spectrum was "free" software (software in the public domain, protected by permissive "BSD" licenses or "copyleft" licenses where the only protections allowed guaranteed the same freedoms to downstream users). At the other end was "proprietary" software, for which the source code was not available at all. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) sought to find a balance between the two extremes that protected user freedoms, while enabling businesses to make money. It did so by way of the Open Source Definition (OSD) which is used as a litmus test by the community to determine whether new licenses are "Open Source".
Open Source plays a key role in Open Cloud, as the Open Cloud Principles (OCP) require "multiple full, faithful and interoperable implementations", at least one of which is Open Source. The purpose of this requirement is to ensure that users always have an alternative that they can deploy and that does not require them to hire developers to implement open standards themselves.
Source: http://opencloudinitiative.org/
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