Cohen said the goal of the manifesto's authors was to "draft a document that clearly states we ... believe that, like the Internet, the cloud itself should be open."

"The manifesto does not speak to application code or licensing but instead to the fundamental principles that the Internet was founded upon -- an open platform available to all," he wrote. "It is a call to action for the worldwide cloud community to get involved and embrace the principles of the open cloud."

Microsoft spilled the beans about the manifesto on a blog post in which it complained about the "lack of openness" of the document, particularly its development process. Microsoft said it was shown the document and asked to sign it without the opportunity to provide feedback or revisions.