So Cloud Computing has become a buzzword in most information technology circles. Pick up any tech magazine or read any tech blog and you’ll see a few articles about the cloud computing. We now have cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) or my friends at the RackSpaceCloud (NYSE: RAX). We also have our old time buddies over at Google (NYSE: GOOG) whom have been pushing the idea of the cloud for years. Now our buddies at Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) have joined the game with their Azure Platform. Clouds appear to be moving forward in the world but there is one question that many have wondered; what role will open source play in cloud computing?

Now I am not simply talking about what will happen with Linux. Keep in mind, the idea of open source software predates Linux by a few decades.  I am talking about the open source software ideology. Many of the clouds give the appearance to be proprietary. After all, Microsoft has their servers and platform, Google has theirs, and so on.

Well there are a few ways that open source will be a big player in the cloud. First off, cloud computing is not something that is just floating in cyber space. Clouds are hosted on hardware somewhere in a datacenter. This hardware doesn’t differentiate much from traditional server technology. It will run an operating system (or operating systems virtualized) as well as other software such as hypervisors, web services, backup, etc. On the datacenter side, there will still be room for Linux and other open source software. Xen will still be used for virtualization. We will still see Apache working to provide web services more than likely. Google has an application hosting service called Google App Engine which is essentially a clone of the Django framework, a framework for Python. The technology will still exist on the backend and open source will still be used.

Now what about the client side? Well we still need to connect to the cloud. When the WebOS takes off, we’ll see more robust web browsers. Google is progressing well with Chrome web browser and it’s Chrome OS. Mozilla Foundation has been on top with it’s open source web browser, Firefox. Firefox offers a multitude of third party plugins that can make your web browser seem like a operating system.  There is onlyy so much that one company can develop so in order for this evolution to take place with web browser, crowd sourcing will need to be adopted just like how it is a factor in Mozilla Foundation.

Now this web browser needs to be installed on something. Enter Netbooks and NetTops. These are low resource, low cost devices that are designed to connect to internet and use the cloud. Now granted, the cloud is still in it’s infancy stages so these features aren’t used as often, however in five years or so, NetBooks and NetTops are going to be used as “terminals to the web”. Now Ubuntu is very popular with both NetBooks and NetTops. With the low resources of NetDevices, Windows has too big of a footprint for those devices in the long run. The beauty of open source is that it’s usually resource light and it is like a buffet of services. Only add the technology you need to operate.

Now how about the software developers? Will they still be able to work in an open source model? Of course. I mentioned earlier that Google utilizes a python framework. RackSpaceCloud started using only those open source platforms and recently added the Microsoft support. Amazon Web Services offer support for both Microsoft and Open Source developers. Microsoft has been a supporter of Zend (the PHP people) and has allowed them to operate on Azure. MySQL, PHP, Apache, Python, and even Ruby have shown their place in the web development world and are not going anywhere at this point. Open source development will not be going anywhere at this place. If anything, it will be adopted more because it’ll keep the cost low.

When all is said and done, cloud computing will still need open source. Cloud computing should allow for more open source mindset. With cheap cloud servers and an increased  interest in open source development platforms, we will see the development of more open source applications on the cloud. The ideology in and of itself will never die. The idea of the sharing of ideas and technology and collaboration will continue in the cloud. With the increase of Web 2.0 and the cloud, information will move much more freely. Of course, we’ll still need hardware even with the cloud. Open source will exist in the datacenter, it will exist in the development world, and it’ll exist ideologically.

Categories: Cloud Computing, Open Source, OS News ~ Trackback