Today ZDNet reported rumors that Derek Collison, former VMware Chief Architect of Cloud Application Platforms, is founding a new Cloud Foundry focused startup. Cloud Foundry is a platform-as-a-service that can be deployed on multiple cloud infrastructures that was open sourced by VMware last year. According to Collison’s LinkedIn profile he left VMware in February.

According to ZDNet’s source, Collison is working on a commercial version of Cloud Foundry outside of VMware and “It’s just at the tipping point of OpenStack” – whatever that means. It may sound like Collison will soon be competing with AppFog, a startup that provides PaaS services based on Cloud Foundry. But Collison is an advisor to AppFog and AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson tells me: “Derek Collison is a close adviser to AppFog and we are working on some great ideas together.”

Asked whether this startup might be the result of VMware spinning off Cloud Foundry into its own company, a VMware spokesperson commented: “Cloud Foundry absolutely will continue at VMware.”

Someone close to the Cloud Foundry project tells me that Collison’s exit from VMware may have been the result of controversy over him putting his own copyright on NATS, an open source messaging system developed by Collison that Cloud Foundry depends on.

“My prediction is that this is one of many forks of CF and that VMware will lose control of the OSS CF project this year,” my source says. “I see a few of VMware competitors joining forces and making their own ‘actually open’ fork of CF. You can see this already happening by ActiveState and Tier3 partnering.”