When Mark Shuttleworth announced the future Ubuntu 9.10 release, Karmic Koala, the goals he outlined for the server version were all to do with cloud computing but you might be asking "What is cloud computing ?" I answer this question and investigate what it can do for Ubuntu?

I was in the middle of my talk, "The Elephant in the Room: Microsoft and Free Software" busily pontificating about Microsoft's nefarious plans for dominating the Web and software as a service when I got heckled.

IBM and other tech companies have issued a statement of principles that calls for keeping cloud computing services as open as possible

Microsoft has opposed an industry-wide plan to promote interoperability in cloud computing claiming, officially it’s because the firm believes the plan is unnecessarily secretive. But there are allegations Microsoft feels threatened by the plan boosting Linux-based systems.

Yesterday, I wrote about the launch of the open source company Cloudera. Olson explains the background to the company, and to Hadoop, the software it is based on: what it does, and why business might want to use it; he talks about his company's services and business model, and why he thinks cloud computing is neither a threat nor an opportunity for open source.

Is the freedom torch passing from Richard Stallman to the next generation? Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy opened the Southern California Linux Expo this year with a keynote about software as a service and user freedoms.

Companies who have previously relied upon software to generate revenue will see financial decline if they take the open source road. This decline however is to be short lived and in the long run will prove to be a power play that will pay off in the future and here is why.

Last week Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software movement caused some head scratching when he made some remarks about cloud computing and web applications calling them stupid.