back to article Open source and the cloud: An unbalanced marriage

There's no question that open source software is helping vendors build utility-style infrastructure - or as the world insists on calling it: cloud computing. But will cloud computing help the companies behind open source software, who pay their bills by collecting cash for commercial support? Or better still, will it help them …

COMMENTS

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  1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Even though this has happened before, a few will still fall for it

    Selling open source with lock-in is like trying to sell windows without support for legacy applications. Eventually even the most pointy haired bosses catch on and plan a migration away from lock in.

    Google have enough money to develop their own operating system, but Microsoft have demonstrated that it is the limit of their resources. Anyone smaller would have to maintain their closed source patches to keep up with the rest of the world using F/OSS for free without the benefit of the largest share of the world's advertising budget or control of the distribution channel. Everyone trying to lock people into different closed source extended clouds would just be a re-run of the Unix wars.

    Most of the free software crowd will not care, and the few who do will use Affero style licenses.

  2. Daniel 1

    About that 'cloud'

    It's curious that the term, 'the cloud', was actually coined within Microsoft, to describe their (extremely proprietary and locked down) 'Cloud OS', isn't it?

  3. The Indomitable Gall

    Total sales value? Irrelevant.

    The total sales figure in dollars is a useless red herring. If "cloud computing" is indeed cheaper than "computer computing" then a low sales figure doesn't say anything about market share....

  4. JohnG

    "One does all the work"

    I didn't know Prince Charles worked, let alone all of it.

  5. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Megaphone

    More about Cloud....... and if you want and need your IT to be Loud, CLOUD or even C#LOUD

    Just as in the Natural World, is Cloud a Stealthy Ethereal Multi Layered Windmill to Tilt at/Hydra to do Battle against/Mistress to Please, Divinely.

    To consider it as anything less, is to Sell yourself Short in the Longest of Long Games.

    And what IT can do for you, and it must also be said, to you if you cannot exercise Controls in ITs Virtual Spaces, is many Different Things to many Different Programmers.

    It is not melodramatic to say that it is at least as Important a Field to Excel in, as was the Race into Space as trumpeted by JFK, and you will even find some Present Day Future IT Space Pioneers saying it is much more Important than that, given the Absolute Advantages which IT dDelivers Effortlessly.

  6. jake Silver badge

    Two whole pages?

    I can say the same thing in a simple sentence: "So called "cloud computing services" vendors are leveraging open systems to their own benefit, without giving much back to the FOSS community." ... In other words, this is hardly news.

  7. Martin Owens

    Not giving Back

    It's not just about giving back, there is much more to Free and Open Source community involvement that just that. And your company fails to take advantage of a whole host of shared commons resources if you don't go all in.

    Someone ort to write something explaining that really, otherwise it'll take 20 years before people cotton on to what's going on.

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