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It's great to see VirtualBox being actively developed, even after Oracle took over control from Sun. This is a fantastic piece of software.
by johnthedebs 16y ago
It's great to see VirtualBox being actively developed, even after Oracle took over control from Sun. This is a fantastic piece of software.
- JshWright 16y agoNot only is it actively being developed, but they're really working to make it attractive to open source developers. Moving the proprietary stuff out to a separate "extension pack" (that could easy be replaced with a third party open-source version) is really a nice step.
- regularfry 16y agoThat would be what is known as "open core": http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/06/open-core-is-bad-for-you/ http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/06/open-cor...
- aliguori 16y agoConsidering that their "core" is a bunch of code that was ripped off of QEMU, I don't see the creation of "extension packs" as a mechanism to be more attractive to open source developers. What would be attractive is contributing their changes back into the upstream project.
- Sephr 16y ago> they're really working to make it attractive to open source developers How so? The separate proprietary and open source versions have been around before the Oracle acquisition. Oracle hasn't done anything to make it more attractive to open source developers.
- JshWright 16y agoThere aren't separate versions anymore. There is one GPLv2 application, and the 'extra' closed source functionality (USB 2.0, VRDP, and Intel PXE) has been split out into a separate 'extension pack.' The extension pack architecture makes it much easier for 3rd party developers to replace the "missing" functionality (a fair amount of work has gone into the API (especially for VRDP-related hooks) to make it much easier for 3rd party developers to do this). Rather than one binary blob, the extension pack uses a fairly well documented set of interfaces.
- Sephr 16y agoAh, thanks. That makes sense.