Perhaps it would be worth-while to write openly to them reminding them of the difference between the open source marketing campaign and the free software movement …</blockquote

I have a feeling that “the cloud” has been appropriated by large corporations that are getting ready to milk those using it.

Perhaps a better course of action would be to work to make our own cloud. There should be an open source/free software cloud made up of directly linked computers – our own. Why not develop software that allows us to leverage the computing power and storage space that sits largely wasted in millions of personal computers connected to the internet for cloud applications. Storage, computing, direct interaction without any central server, social networking on the cloud, file exchange, our own currency … there must be thousands of ways to use the real cloud, the one that is user driven and maintained, not some commercially driven variant of it.

What is being promoted as “the cloud” is a pale commercial version that perpetuates the client/server paradigm by merely linking the servers and sharing the customers.

Freeing the cloud would really be making our own!