"Cloud Computing risks undoing the gains of the free software movement in ‘owning and controlling our own code‘. Thomas Lord examines the potential for achieving software and user freedom in the world of ‘cloud computing’ (a concept he rejects, preferring ‘utility computing’, see below).

The future of software is in cloud computing," says Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol, a company that provides mobile services. And if free and open source software (FOSS) is going to survive in that emerging market, he says, then the community needs to adjust by promoting greater use of the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), a license specifically crafted for software as a service.

“Open Source” advocate: «...I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software...» --

Actually, a few of us have our doubts, but leaving that aside, I think it's important to ask where does open source stand if the cloud computing vision *does* come to fruition? Would that be a good or bad thing for free software?

Creating a business around free software is hardly a new idea: Cygnus Solutions, based around Stallman's GCC, was set up in 1989. But here's one with a trendy twist: a company based on the open source *cloud computing* app Hadoop, an Apache Project

What good are free and open source licenses, all based on the act of software distribution, when software is no longer distributed but merely performed on the global network stage?

According to reports online today, and a release, Union Square Ventures, the venture firm that funded such names as Del.icio.us, FeedBurner, Etsy and Twitter, is investing $1.5 million in open source cloud computing service 10gen.

"Free software is a good thing, its empowering, I might even go as far as to say its the way things should be done. One of the biggest threats to free software at the moment is “web services”, or if you’re an airy fairy Web 2.0 person “The Cloud” (airy could, geddit?).

Fashion is fickle. One day thin clients and clusters are the fashion de jour, the next it's Web 2.0, Virtualisation or distributed computing and Grids. They who live by the sword of fashion will surely perish by it but a new model has been strutting its stuff along the catwalk of web fashion and she goes by the name of Cloud Computing.