OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18602/VMware_Open_Sources_VMware_Tools Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 20 May 2013 06:58:56 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Older OSes / alternate OSes http://www.osnews.com/thread?270663 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270663 This is one good news. Now, I hope we will see gfx card drivers for older/alternative OSes. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rx182) Comments Smart step http://www.osnews.com/thread?270666 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270666 I guess this is a really smart step by VMware. Does this mean i can use "Unity" with ubuntu soon? Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Axentrix) Comments RE: Smart step http://www.osnews.com/thread?270675 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270675 With some good luck, yup.

This is great news for me. I know very little about how smart this is as a marketing move, but for me as a developer, it's interesting. I can't wait to have a look at the sources just in order to see what's around.

Now I just can't wait to see what Microsoft is going to open source :-P. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (alexandru_lz) Comments smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?270678 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270678 It has been hypothesized that VMware was using code that required them to contribute the source in an open manner. Or is VMware doing this of their own accord? Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (libray) Comments RE: smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?270684 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270684 Did you misread the announcement? Their open sourcing the tools.. not their virtualization software ;) .

In reality, this will allow developers of operating systems to freely "interface" with the virtual machines etc..

As for them violating GPL, exactly "which" project would they "steal" from? You GPL zealots are annoying.. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BSDfan) Comments RE: smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?270688 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270688 Wheither they are 'forced' to do it or do it voluntary doesn't really matter it's good news either way.

I think this is just strategy to keep the focus on VMWare and not on the competition, Sun like move. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mkools) Comments About time! http://www.osnews.com/thread?270691 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270691 This will help VMware, no doubt, but it's really good news for people who already use VMware and want to run guests that aren't as well supported as others. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nevali) Comments RE: smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?270693 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270693 You are free to diff the code, I'm sure you'll find a few matching variable names and a few commas. These are usually enough for Cease and Desist letters, I can't wait to see one of these mentioning GPL.

Seriously, the alleged breaking of the GPL didn't have anything to do with VMware Tools, which are, essentially, drivers. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (alexandru_lz) Comments RE[2]: Smart step http://www.osnews.com/thread?270699 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270699 I see a headline...

Microsoft becomes an open source company to compete with open source. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (systyrant) Comments RE[2]: smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?270703 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270703 Which project? Surely you know that ESX 3 uses linux as a kind of bootstrap to load the hypervisor, and the question becomes whether or not the hypervisor now constitutes a derivative work.

I'm not saying this is true, but obviously linux would be the project they'd want to "steal" from if they were going to. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rajj) Comments FreeBSD Guests http://www.osnews.com/thread?270707 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270707 Hey maybe now we'll actually get 6.x support. I've had luck running hostd and the vmmemctl module from the 5.x tools on 6.x without any instability, but we're still missing vmxnet. It'd also be nice to be able to install it from the ports tree without having to manually fetch the distribution file. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rajj) Comments Great! http://www.osnews.com/thread?270715 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270715 Now I'm waiting for someone to start hacking through QNX source and port VMWare tools to it as well as a new ATI driver!

This surely is an eventful week. I wonder who will release something tomorrow... Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ventajou) Comments RE: Older OSes / alternate OSes http://www.osnews.com/thread?270738 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270738 This is one good news. Now, I hope we will see gfx card drivers for older/alternative OSes.

Surprise! This doesn't include video drivers.

Basically it appears that this boils down to a memory control module (probably to help the host/guest memory management coordination - i don't know the details), a file locking driver for drag-n-drop support?, a hostguest file transfer tool, and looks like a tool to manage the automatic resolution adjustment when the host window is resized (at least, I think that's what it does - but it's not a video driver).

So, if you're looking for a video driver, it references x.org - where a driver already exists.

Oh also, there's a vmxnet driver - but I doubt many OSes actually need that at this point - especially when VMWare emulates several different network chipsets. (oh, i see there's some fancy cpu/memory reduction involved with this driver - so I guess people who use vmware often, this is a nice driver).Edited 2007-09-12 22:41 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (umccullough) Comments RE[2]: smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?270779 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270779 Dude, before you start calling people zealots, you might actually want to read up on what's been going on in the IT world recently.

There has been quite a few questions asked about ESX3 and, more specifically, if it can be considered a derived work of the Linux kernel.

I understand if you don't like, or care, about this sort of thing but if you use software for your proprietary product, you need to abide by the license of that software.

How would you feel if VMWare built ESX3 on top of FBSD yet 'forgot' to mention that in they're copyright? Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SReilly) Comments RE[3]: smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?270812 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270812 Just because they use linux to setup an environment to boot their hyporvisor doesn't mean they have to give you the code to ESX. At most it means they have to dish out their bootstrapping code. It is quite easy to use linux to setup and boot DOS/BeOS/OpenStep/etc... but this by no means says that I have to give you the code to any of those OS's.

A derivative work is not "anything it touches" Thu, 13 Sep 2007 02:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WiggetyWhack) Comments RE[4]: smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?270877 http://www.osnews.com/thread?270877
A derivative work is not "anything it touches"


I agree but your interpretation of the GPL has nothing to do with the argument. Nobody is saying VMWare needs to give me, or anybody else for that matter, they're whole product. If the ESX3 bootstrap is a derived work, than that code needs to be released under the GPL, period.

Your personal opinion is of no consequence here. Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SReilly) Comments RE[2]: smells of coercion http://www.osnews.com/thread?271103 http://www.osnews.com/thread?271103 Quite funny that you call me a GPL zealot when my systems of choice use CDDL (Solaris) and BSD(NetBSD). Perhaps you should look for a forum where the only intent is to argue versus one of discussion.

To give credit where it is due, is to look between the lines regardless of license, especially if you read about the questionable underpinnings of the ESX server.

The question here is not whether one license is better than the other, but rather how honorable is VMware and how "innovative" is their product if they use mostly off-the-shelf technology. Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (libray) Comments