If you've been reading my blog for the past few years, you know I've been a big proponent of the personal cloud vision as the future of online computing. I don't just see it as minor improvement, but as a significant shift in the way the 'Net operates.

All of the work we've been doing uses a platform we call CloudOS. This screencast, The Cloud Needs an Operating System explains why we think CloudOS is important. Operating systems give developers leverage and the give people control. Both are critical in making the most of the Internet.

SquareTag is a product based on personal clouds. SquareTag is built on the CloudOS. Personal clouds give rise to a new way of building Internet applications. This model also uses CloudOS. CloudOS runs on top of the Kinetic Rule Engine, an open source rules engine with a personal twist.

Today we're happy to announce that CloudOS will be open source as well. There are still some things we need to get right in the source before we release it (small things like redacting keys). When we do it will be under the GPL license.

We're very excited about this move because we think CloudOS has great potential. But to reach that potential it has to attract developers. We feel that opening the source for CloudOS will help us achieve that goal.