""The open source community already does this, with the potential for super-communities," he said" ....

Yes, QuITe .... aka Rule and Leadership.

IT is much more than just potential though for IT is Presently the Current bringing in the Changes for Global Virtualisation.

OK so Rackspace sell online services. This hardly makes them unbiased...

I don't dispute an increasing use of these services by SMB, but I still doubt that any sane person who has ever dealt with the average (let alone sub-average) hosting company would put their business (i.e. all their data etc) in the hands of a third party.