[vbox-dev] VirtualBox Extension Pack going GPL?

[Geoff Nordli]

I would be interested in the VRDP piece as well and contributing to the 
cost of developing/purchasing it.

Citrix just open sourced XenServer, the whole stack, there is no 
difference now between the commercial offering and the open source 
version; except for support.

Redhat's KVM hypervisor is open.

Here is hoping that one day Oracle releases VRDP under an open source 
license.  As Pau writes below, you can't buy an OEM version; therefore 
they aren't monetizing it on the server side, except for their Secure 
Global Desktop.


On 13-07-19 10:59 AM, Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We developed our own RDP-like protocol for use with WPF. It's quite 
> naïve (take IFrameBuffer and send PNG's with the changed area, then 
> paint it) but it works fine for LANs, which is our use case. It's GPL 
> and developed in C#. We developed it for two reasons:
>
> - The most important one: it was impossible to OEM license VirtualBox. 
> We contacted Sun, then Oracle, multiple times for years. In the end, 
> our product was ready to sell and still had no OEM licensing rates 
> (just a "you can distribute it for free for now")
> - Also important: embedding the RDP ActiveX in WPF causes all sorts of 
> problems. We literally spent man-months debugging this and 
> implementing all kind of workarounds. Our own implementation was ready 
> in less than a week by one person.
>
> Maybe KickStarting a fully opensource (BSD license, please) Guest 
> Additions would get traction.
>
> What worries me is whether an initiative like this would definitely 
> kill VirtualBox. Oracle recently nixed every virtualization product it 
> inherited from Sun but VirtualBox.
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 7:38 PM, Huihong Luo <huisinro at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:huisinro at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>     As for vrdp, I've been working on using FreeRDP, not fully working
>     yet, but it is very positive, also made the remoteUSB to work too.
>
>     For the remaining portions of the extension pack, I don't have any
>     ideas. Basically, USB + VRDP considered to be done, provided a
>     nice payment. It took me one year.
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     *From:* Oliver Loch <o.loch at gmx.net <mailto:o.loch at gmx.net>>
>     *To:* Huihong Luo <huisinro at yahoo.com <mailto:huisinro at yahoo.com>>
>     *Cc:* Joachim Schiele <js-vbox at lastlog.de
>     <mailto:js-vbox at lastlog.de>>; "vbox-dev at virtualbox.org
>     <mailto:vbox-dev at virtualbox.org>" <vbox-dev at virtualbox.org
>     <mailto:vbox-dev at virtualbox.org>>
>     *Sent:* Friday, July 19, 2013 10:30 AM
>     *Subject:* Re: [vbox-dev] VirtualBox Extension Pack going GPL?
>
>     Gimme your bank account I'll send you an Euro for your effort.
>
>     Am 19.07.2013 um 19:21 schrieb Huihong Luo <huisinro at yahoo.com
>     <mailto:huisinro at yahoo.com>>:
>
>>     I do have a complete implementation of the USB 2.0 (fully
>>     compatible to vbox), if someone pays, I can submit my code as
>>     open source.
>>
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>     *From:* Joachim Schiele <js-vbox at lastlog.de
>>     <mailto:js-vbox at lastlog.de>>
>>     *To:* vbox-dev at virtualbox.org <mailto:vbox-dev at virtualbox.org>
>>     *Sent:* Friday, July 19, 2013 8:50 AM
>>     *Subject:* [vbox-dev] VirtualBox Extension Pack going GPL?
>>
>>     dear vbox developers and users,
>>
>>     i would like to get the proprietary parts, especially the VirtualBox
>>     Extension Pack, open source. most of VirtualBox is already open
>>     source,
>>     which is a good thing in several regards:
>>     - quality of distro integration and
>>     - debugging
>>
>>     getting basic OSE virtualbox support is straight forward and
>>     better than
>>     any other solution i tried (i'm on linux, i tried vmware/libvirt)
>>     for
>>     desktop virtualization.
>>
>>     in contrast to OSE virtualbox, installing VBox extension pack is
>>     a PITA:
>>     - http://nixos.org/wiki/Installing_VirtualBox_on_NixOS
>>     - http://forums-web2.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-717099-start-0.html
>>     - http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/VirtualBox/Installation#Extension-Pack
>>
>>     it usually forces me to manually download the extension pack which
>>     interrupts my whole upgrade process. and i have to do that on each
>>     upgrade of my system which really costs a lot of time. so here is my
>>     proposal:
>>
>>     we try to get the 'USB 2.0 support codebase' of the 'VirtualBox
>>     Extension Pack' open source!
>>
>>     VirtualBox Extension Pack consists of:
>>     * support for USB 2.0 devices
>>     * VirtualBox RDP and PXE boot for Intel cards
>>     * VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP) support
>>     * Experimental support for PCI passthrough on Linux hosts
>>
>>     i would like to start with the USB 2.0 support becoming open
>>     source and
>>     i think we have several options:
>>
>>     == 1 ==
>>     oracle releases the 'oracle USB 2.0 codebase' as GPL for free -
>>     is that
>>     an option?
>>
>>     == 2 ==
>>     we finance the 'oracle USB 2.0 codebase' GPL release via kickstarter
>>     (how much would oracle want for their code?)
>>
>>     == 3 ==
>>     we have the specification so we could finance a 'third party GPL
>>     USB 2.0
>>     codebase', we could finance this via kickstarter as well
>>

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