The UNG Project

The UNG project develops a Cloud Computing environment which is:

  • Free (as in Freedom)
  • Secure (as in Privacy)
  • Resilient (as the Internet)
  • Standard (as the Web)
  • Friendly (as our Community)

Why UNG?

The UNG acronym stands for "UNG is Not G....". Some people say that "G..." relates to a famous search engine while others believe that it refers to the GNU project, a major source of inspiration for UNG.

Many Free Software developers work nowadays in companies which build proprietary clouds and do not care aboout Freedom. The ever increasing gap between Free Software ideals and the way Free Software is used to deprive people and companies from their Freedom on the Cloud could eventually lead to the end of Free Software and to the end of Freedom.

The UNG project believes that it is possible and desirable to build a Free Cloud alternative.

It is possible to extend to the Cloud all ideals of the Free Software movement. It is possible to develop new technologies which are more efficient and more reliable than proprierary Cloud. It is desireable that people or company's private data are not controlled by a single company or by a single government. It is desirable to build a Cloud which can protect Free Competition between businesses and fair trade between countries.

UNG Components

The UNG project consists for now of two software components - UNG Docs and SlapOS - both of which are useful to build resilient and secure enterprise information systems.

For most people, UNG Docs is a Web Office suite which provides word processor, spreadsheet, illustration based on W3C standards. UNG Docs can store data locally on a tablet PC or split encrypted data on multiple remote servers. UNG Docs envisions to become an open source component framework which can be used to build javascript user interfaces for enterprise applications. UNG Docs could thus be used to develop front-ends of enterprise applications such ERP, ECM, CRM, etc. and enforce interoperability between different suppliers of enterprise software.

SlapOS is a Cloud Operating System which can be used to start doing business on the Cloud in a couple of hours. SlapOS manages the distribution, the provisionning and the migration of software applications on any Cloud. It is based on a reflexive and distributed architecture so that the failure of one server or of one Cloud provider does not lead to massive outages. SlapOS includes a billing model at its core so that independent Cloud providers can help each other automatically and trust to be paid for the commodity resources they provided each other. SlapOS can also be used to enforce interoperability between Cloud providers with or without their consent.

Who finances UNG?

UNG is self financed. UNG components are all used in medium or large scale enterprise applications. This secures long term income to finance UNG R&D. No venture capital is needed. Donations or contributions are welcome to improve documentation or add missing features which are not yet in the roadmap and which no company will likely finance.

Who is UNG?

UNG Docs was created by developers of IFF in Brazil and Nexedi in France. SlapOS was created by developers of VIFIB in France with contributions from IFF in Brazil and Nexedi in Japan. It was ported to Wuidows by XXX in China. For now, UNG is the project of 40 developers and 7 organizations. Before the end of 2011, UNG will become the project of 60 developers of 10 organizations and is expect to grow beyond.

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