3 ms·

I am definitely not complaining, but I wonder why Oracle continues work on VirtualBox at all? When they acquired Sun, they seemed in a hurry to kill off all th

by krylon 9y ago

I am definitely not complaining, but I wonder why Oracle continues work on VirtualBox at all? When they acquired Sun, they seemed in a hurry to kill off all the other open source projects Sun had been running. Do they use it as the basis for their cloud-infrastructure[1] or what? I do not see how VirtualBox generates any revenue for Oracle, and they have a reputation for being very ... focussed when it comes to revenue. [1] That seems pretty unlikely

userbinator 9y ago
They have a closed-source "extension pack" with a bunch of quite useful and even necessary features (e.g. USB 2.0) so that could be their revenue source, but looking around it seems that others have been rather unsuccessful at actually trying to pay for it --- the response Oracle has given them is "you can use and redistribute it for free".
- krylon 9y ago
  Huh. Next thing you know Microsoft is going to host all Windows and Office development on public github repos, IBM begins lobbying against software patents, and GNU/Hurd reaches 1.0... These are interesting times we live in for sure.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    Tangential related, didn't I see recently that IBM has a patent on patent trolling?
    - krylon 9y ago
      If so, that could be the starting point for the ... most interesting lawsuit ever.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
        I just sort of noticed the headline somewhere, haven't really looked in to it. This NPR article has more detail: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-you-get-a-patent-on-being-a-patent-troll https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-...
        krylon 9y ago
        In a defensive capability, it gets even better: Patent Troll: Hi, I am a Patent Troll, and I want to sue your ... company. Halliburton: Look, Dame or Dude, you have three choices: 1. We have a patent on that. You cannot sue us without a license. Good bye! 2. We have a patent on that. You cannot sue us without a license. Licenses are $ 42 trillion. *Per Lawyer*. See you in court. Or not. 3. We buy your company, because we rule! Patent Troll: *Head explodes* -- The End -- A decent writer could make a sitcom out of this in no time. I already have a picture in my head -- it is like Night Court meets Psych! I wanna watch this on Netflix!!!
    - pgeorgi 9y ago
      Business methods and legal theories are exempt from patents, but OTOH, so was software once upon a time.
      - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
        Business method patents are certainly a thing.
- johannes1234321 9y ago
  That was already closed at Sun times I believe since it contains third party code where Sun/Oracle didn't have the right to open source it.
- jeff_vader 9y ago
  In past I wanted my employers to pay for VirtualBox commercial licences (to support the project and in some cases it was a requirement that all software used in development process is properly licensed) but I couldn't even find it anywhere as a product. Nowadays it is available[1] (not sure since when) but minimum number of licenses to purchase is 100. [1]: https://shop.oracle.com/apex/product?p1=OracleVMVirtualBoxEnterprise https://shop.oracle.com/apex/product?p1=OracleVMVirtualBoxEn...
  - userbinator 9y ago
    Interesting. The minimum order quantity suggests that Oracle is not interested in small orders (and I'm almost willing to bet that if you asked to buy fewer than that for commercial use, the response would be "just use it for free".) $50/user is also quite low by Oracle standards... I guess they decided the legal fees involved in going after "small violations" are not worth the trouble. However, even the extensions used to be free for "noncommercial use in a commercial environment" --- they silently changed the license relatively recently: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=85092 https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=85092
    - alyandon 9y ago
      Yikes, that license change bites. I guess I'm going to have to switch to using KVM at work now if I to do things like USB device passthrough now. Shame too because setting up KVM networking is way more complicated than setting up VirtualBox networking.

by krylon 9y ago

userbinator 9y ago

They have a closed-source "extension pack" with a bunch of quite useful and even necessary features (e.g. USB 2.0) so that could be their revenue source, but looking around it seems that others have been rather unsuccessful at actually trying to pay for it --- the response Oracle has given them is "you can use and redistribute it for free".

krylon 9y ago
Huh. Next thing you know Microsoft is going to host all Windows and Office development on public github repos, IBM begins lobbying against software patents, and GNU/Hurd reaches 1.0... These are interesting times we live in for sure.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  Tangential related, didn't I see recently that IBM has a patent on patent trolling?
  - krylon 9y ago
    If so, that could be the starting point for the ... most interesting lawsuit ever.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      I just sort of noticed the headline somewhere, haven't really looked in to it. This NPR article has more detail: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-you-get-a-patent-on-being-a-patent-troll https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-...
      - krylon 9y ago
        In a defensive capability, it gets even better: Patent Troll: Hi, I am a Patent Troll, and I want to sue your ... company. Halliburton: Look, Dame or Dude, you have three choices: 1. We have a patent on that. You cannot sue us without a license. Good bye! 2. We have a patent on that. You cannot sue us without a license. Licenses are $ 42 trillion. *Per Lawyer*. See you in court. Or not. 3. We buy your company, because we rule! Patent Troll: *Head explodes* -- The End -- A decent writer could make a sitcom out of this in no time. I already have a picture in my head -- it is like Night Court meets Psych! I wanna watch this on Netflix!!!
  - pgeorgi 9y ago
    Business methods and legal theories are exempt from patents, but OTOH, so was software once upon a time.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
      Business method patents are certainly a thing.
johannes1234321 9y ago
That was already closed at Sun times I believe since it contains third party code where Sun/Oracle didn't have the right to open source it.
jeff_vader 9y ago
In past I wanted my employers to pay for VirtualBox commercial licences (to support the project and in some cases it was a requirement that all software used in development process is properly licensed) but I couldn't even find it anywhere as a product. Nowadays it is available[1] (not sure since when) but minimum number of licenses to purchase is 100. [1]: https://shop.oracle.com/apex/product?p1=OracleVMVirtualBoxEnterprise https://shop.oracle.com/apex/product?p1=OracleVMVirtualBoxEn...
- userbinator 9y ago
  Interesting. The minimum order quantity suggests that Oracle is not interested in small orders (and I'm almost willing to bet that if you asked to buy fewer than that for commercial use, the response would be "just use it for free".) $50/user is also quite low by Oracle standards... I guess they decided the legal fees involved in going after "small violations" are not worth the trouble. However, even the extensions used to be free for "noncommercial use in a commercial environment" --- they silently changed the license relatively recently: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=85092 https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=85092
  - alyandon 9y ago
    Yikes, that license change bites. I guess I'm going to have to switch to using KVM at work now if I to do things like USB device passthrough now. Shame too because setting up KVM networking is way more complicated than setting up VirtualBox networking.