[ Thanks to James
Maguire for this link. ]
“The cloud computing boom has brought a surge of
opportunity to the open source world. Open source developers and
users are taking advantage of these opportunities in three key
ways.“First, many open source applications are now available on a
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis. For open source project owners,
hosting apps in the cloud offers a new revenue stream. And for
users, it means access to excellent programs and support without
the need to maintain their own hardware or hire additional support
personnel.“Also, because these apps are accessed via a browser, they’re
generally multi-platform and enable more workforce
mobility—not to mention that they usually costs less than
proprietary alternatives.“Other open source projects aren’t available on an SaaS basis,
but their project owners have taken the steps necessary to make
them easy to use in the cloud. By making pre-configured images
available through Amazon Web Services or other public clouds, these
developers are finding a wider audience. And users benefit from
easy-to-deploy solutions that offer the other advantages of cloud
computing as well.”