Back in July last year we reported on the formation of a new open source cloud computing start-up called 10gen on our Cloud Cover blog as well as here.

Seven months later and there have been a few changes at 10gen, such that our information management blog is arguably the most suitable venue for discussion of the implications of 10gen’s MongoDB, the cloud computing database which has now become its major focus.

A quick recap: 10gen launched as an open source platform-as-a-service play offering the MongoDB object database as well as an application server and file system. So far, so cloud stack.

However, the file system quickly became an interface layer to MongoDB while the company more recently decided that its application server runtime and MongoDB are better off apart and shifted its attention to the database, a standalone beta version of which was released last week.

As the two projects have diverged so will this post. To continue reading about the future of MongoDB head for Too Much Information, otherwise:

10gen will continue to use the Babble application server for its existing customers and will continue to participate in the project although the plan is for it to transition from a company-led open source project to a community-led open source project.

In order to facilitate this 10gen has re-licensed the software under the Apache License (it was previously licensed using the GNU Affero GPL) and re-hosted it at an independent site.

It also plans to help it take its first steps: “We use the platform ourselves as well as having clients running applications on the platform. For us, it’s important that we do whatever we can to help establish a thriving community around Babble outside of 10gen.”

While it uses MongoDB for data persistence Babble is independent and is now described as a next-generation web application server suitable for small scale enterprise and department level applications as well as the cloud.

We’ve written before on here about the theory that an open source license enables a project to outlive the attention of its corporate supporters.

The theory hasn’t worked too well in practice for the Mindquarry project. It will be interesting to see whether a change of license has the desired effect for Babble.