How cloud can give back to open source

May 30, 2012, 10:13 AM — There's been a lot of talk about open source and the cloud, which makes sense given the proliferation of open source technologies that in fact comprise cloud computing.

What about open source in the cloud?

But what about open source in the cloud? Can cloud computing and storage provide open source projects less expensive access to computing resources?

The use of cloud computing to perform these rebuilding tasks is not specifically new Nussbaum is as well a systems engineer on the Grid'5000 high-performance computing innovation platform and had been using Grid'5000 to rebuild and test packages since 2007.

This tweaked my attention, if only because services like AWS and other public and private clouds could be a real boon to open source projects who always seem to be hunting around for computing resources.

But for projects like Linux Mint or Mandriva, which are popular but without commercial sponsorship, I can see cloud services offering a powerful alternative for storage and computational needs. Taking everything into account, if cloud can help the latest super-neato-Silicon Valley startup get on its feet, why not a struggling open source project? That cloud computing fits perfectly with the distributed development model that's so pervasive in FLOSS projects is just icing on the cake.

Important mission to undertake

This is an important mission to undertake. Though the costs of computing resources are far less than that of human time and effort, getting FLOSS projects access to more computing resources can only help them flourish.

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