[olug] VirtualBox?

[Adam Lassek]

That sounds pretty paranoid to me. GPL code can be forked, period. That's a
basic feature of the license. It's also a lot of work, which is a perfectly
good explanation why it hasn't been done.

I've used every virtualization solution available in Linux, and would rank
Qemu a distant third in usability, stability and performance. YMMV.

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 8:03 AM, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> On Tuesday 01 April 2008, Adam Lassek wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 04 March 2008, Brady Cox wrote:
> > > > Anyone had any experience with this?  I'm installing Windows right
> > > > now.  Wish me luck.
> > > VirtualBox is anti-free software. (k)qemu works great and is free!
> >
> > This is not true. Virtualbox OSE is GPL2 licensed. Qemu can't hold a
> candle
> > to VB -- especially seamless mode.
>
> VirtualBox "OSE" is just a legal form of artificial restrictions.
> VirtualBox,
> complete, is not GPL2. The company also acts to prevent* any kind of
> developer community from growing outside of their employment, so they can
> effectively close even the GPL2 code at any time without much risk of a
> fork.
>
> Basically, that GPL2 "edition" serves the purpose of killing off
> competition
> from free software like qemu.
>
> As far as a technical comparison between qemu and VirtualBox... qemu
> supports
> x86, ARM, SPARC, PowerPC, MIPS, and m68k-- including running an x86 system
> on
> PowerPC or almost any other combination. qemu also supports user-mode
> emulation, meaning you can run just one application instead of booting an
> entire OS. VirtualBox has USB support too, but it is one of the features
> that
> is kept out of the GPL2 edition.
>
> On the other hand, VirtualBox does have "seamless" Windows support and a
> nice
> GUI. I don't use Windows, nor care overly much about GUIs, so qemu is an
> obvious win to me. Maybe those things are more important for you. But in
> the
> long run, I think it'd be far easier to add "seamless" + GUI to qemu that
> it
> would be to rewrite VirtualBox's architecture to support the things qemu
> does.
>
> Luke
>
> * No, I don't have actual proof they are actively trying to do this.
> However,
> I have heard from developers that in effect this is the case. Also note
> the
> list of external contributors has a total of ONE person:
>        http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/List%20of%20Contributors
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