Rackspace officials want you to know that Rackspace is not a software company.

That the hosting company doesn't view its software as a major asset is obvious from its Web site, where the "Why Rackspace?" page cites support, uptime and expertise as the reasons to turn to its public cloud. But with the announcement this week that it plans to open-source its cloud platform, Rackspace's strategy has become more openly apparent.

Rackspace announced Monday that it is open-sourcing its cloud computing platform, making a bid to bring some sorely needed interoperability to the cloud with the launch of the OpenStack project.

First up is the software behind the company's cloud storage engine, Rackspace Cloud Files. You can freely download early code at the OpenStack site under the Apache 2.0 license -- meaning of course that you can do pretty anything you want with the code. The full release is expected in mid-September, according to the site.