Frequently Asked Questions
What is COSMOS?
The COSMOS (COmmunity-driven Systems Management in Open Source) project provides an extensible, standards-based framework upon which software developers can create specialized, differentiated and interoperable offerings of tools for systems management.
Who is involved in the COSMOS project?
The COSMOS open community was first announced in October, 2006 and includes industry leaders CA, Cisco Systems, Compuware, GroundWork Open Source, IBM and OC Systems. Anyone is welcome to participate in COSMOS and we encourage you to get involved and check out the newsgroup, mailing lists, web site and wiki.
What capabilities will the COSMOS framework include?
COSMOS will provide standards based open frameworks for use in systems management as well as an exemplary application that demonstrates the use of the framework. COSMOS also provides a complimentary set of enablement tooling that facilitates makes it easy for people to consume and use COSMOS.
What Is the typical relationship between open source and standards?
One organization develops the standards, while an independent group develops open-source code that adheres to those standards. Many successful open source communities implement open standards to a great degree. A good example is the relationship between the MySQL and PostgreSQL open source databases and the Structured Query Language (SQL) standard.
How will COSMOS use the Service Modeling Language (SML)?
The SML is an xml schema specification used to model complex IT services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. The SML work has been submitted to W3C on February 2007. Refer to the following link http://serviceml.org/ for more details on the SML standard. Initially, COSMOS aims to work with the community to provide a reference
implementation of the SML, and SML-IF. In support of the emerging SML standard, the COSMOS project is also proposing to offer an SML and SML-IF validator implementation. Over time, COSMOS intends to leverage models defined using SML in support of system management scenarios.
Is there a technical roadmap available?
Yes, the community has a technical roadmap available. For details and updates on the COSMOS roadmap, please visit the COSMOS project page at: http://www.eclipse.org/COSMOS/.
Will COSMOS-based offerings be free?
Since COSMOS code will be released under the Eclipse Public License the code will be available from the Eclipse Foundation free of charge. Commercial vendors may charge for COSMOS-based offerings. Each vendor that uses COSMOS open source code will make their own decisions about pricing for these offerings.
Why would customers buy commercial software when they have an open source option?
Both commercial and open source implementations have their place. Systems management vendors offer products with advanced, unique value-add capabilities, whereas open source projects often offer basic functions. These models are combined when proprietary "plug-ins" are built on an open source framework. This "plug-in" approach is possible with the COSMOS framework.
Where can I get more information about COSMOS?
Interested parties can visit http://www.eclipse.org/COSMOS/ for additional information and details on joining the COSMOS project.
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