Just when I finished writing about how open source licenses have little to say about SaaS, along comes Lumen with an open source SaaS platform. Microsoft talks about Windows Live Core. Salesforce talks about Apex. But PHP applications are out there and making browsers sing right now, every day, all day. Applications are obviously moving to the web (whether as SaaS or some other trendy word). Lumen is a new entra p:bigbite/multi-title –> Just when I finished writing about how open source licenses have little to say about SaaS, along comes Lumen with an open source SaaS platform. Microsoft talks about Windows Live Core. Salesforce talks about Apex. But PHP applications are out there and making browsers sing right now, every day, all day. Applications are obviously moving to the web (whether as SaaS or some other trendy word). Lumen is a new entrant into the market with a free PHP app server that is used to make commercial and open source SaaS (web applications). From its press release:Lumen’s SaaS platform is in use by more than 200 commercial customers with over 150,000 users of on-demand applications….Lumenation is the industry’s first PHP platform to focus on SaaS developers, making PHP an effective alternative to proprietary SaaS development platforms such as Saleforce’s AppSpace and Microsoft’s Live Core…. In March, market analyst firm IDC released a survey of over 1,000 small- to medium-sized businesses, in which between five and 15 percent said they were considering adopting a SaaS solution in the next 12 months.This sounds very cool to me – particularly the commercial traction – but I do have to wonder how this differs from ActiveGrid, which at one point billed itself as the PHP application server. And it will be especially interesting to see how companies like Bungee Labs compete with Lumen for developer mindshare. Most interesting of all, however, is how Lumen and others will wed open source with SaaS. Not the “wedding” that consists of lots of Web 2.0 companies pilfering open source and giving nothing back (or comparatively nothing). But true SaaS companies also existing as true open source companies. Lumen seems to be doing this well today. It’s the exception. Open Source