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Open Source and the "Xen" of Xen

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the not-all-roses dept.

willdavid writes "In a follow-up to his original look at what happened to Xen, Jeff Gould talks to XenSource CTO Simon Crosby. Usually we hear about how open source provides freedoms for end users. However, this article talks about the difficulty a small software developer has with an open source license, in particular, the need to prevent Red Hat, IBM or Novell from running away with all the business revenue."

12 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. redhat stealing xen mindshare by SolusSD · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Redhat Enterprise Linux refers to xen as Redhat Virtualization. Sure- the actual binaries are referred to as Xen, but the documentation gives virtually NO credit where credit is due. If I were a Xen developer, i'd be insulted.

    1. Re:redhat stealing xen mindshare by chicagoan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I disagree. I think RedHat is generalizing virtualization and that is obvious with their libvirt. On Fedora 7 libvirt supports both Xen and KVM. The idea is that as new virtualization technologies come in, you can use the same api / gui for dealing with the different virtual machines.

      If they had a GUI called RedHat Xen, then they'd need another one for dealing with KVM.

    2. Re:redhat stealing xen mindshare by Richard+W.M.+Jones · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Red Hat do this because Xen trademarked the term and restrict its usage.

      The comment about libvirt is funny though. I would invite anyone to come and look at libvirt and particularly the mailing list archives and to decide for themselves if libvirt is really "proprietary software published openly" (whatever that even means).

      Rich.

      --
      libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
  2. Plenty of licenses by FranTaylor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are plenty of licenses out there. Don't like GPL? Fine, don't play in their sandbox. BSD has a nice place to play, too, and you can keep your toys if you want. You might get a little lonely, though.

  3. ABI is interesting by jshriverWVU · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Crosby argues that the ABI policy guarantees you can take a VM out of the freezer ten years from now and still be sure it will run on whatever version of Xen is current then.

    Wonder how this is done? This sounds like it would hinder the efficiency Xen. Besides who know's what architectures will be around in 10 years. I'm guessing it's not going to be a hypervisor anymore like VMWare, but more like VirtualPC which emulations the targeted architecture (perhaps both).

    Without this I seriously doubt I'll be able to take a Xen x86 system image and put it on a "PPC 2017" system, or whatever processors will be popular then; without some form of emulation.

  4. Interesting tidbit... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    ...for those who have/use VMWare ESX Server, you prolly already know it, but for those who do not, you may be surprised to know that VMWare uses Linux at the very heart of it's flagship product.

    Either way Linux wins.

  5. Xen and Trusted Computing by SiliconEntity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most people are unaware of the work going on as part of Xen for support of Trusted Computing. The Security Enhancements for Xen project is working on integrating the TPM into Xen so that virtual machines will get "measured" (hashed into the TPM) and Xen can report which VM is running using Remote Attestation. This way if someone hacks their VM, remote parties will know about it. Other technologies related to this include Intel's Trusted Execution Technology (aka LaGrande Technology) which adds security beyond the TPM to really lock down the machine. See this mailing list thread for discussion of the recent patch adding TXT support to Xen.

    Personally I think this is fine and can really increase the security and utility of virtualization. But particularly with the recent release of GPLv3 and controversy over trusted computing it is interesting to see Xen moving in this direction. I imagine that it means that Xen will stick to GPLv2.

  6. I'm going to have to disagree by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Where's the paradox in selling knowledge? I sell my knowledge to my employer(s). Companies have come to expect that if they have a problem, they'll be able to go to the vendor for support, and the only way to guarantee that is to sell it. In FOSS, I provide my code and I get a good program in return and the community as a whole provides me with more programs and everyone benefits and gets as much or more than they put into their projects. On the flip side there are companies that demand something the FOSS community can't reliably provide, so Red Hat, et al, have offered to be a layer between companies and open source. Again, where's the paradox of a company selling its knowledge and time?

    in a media-driven capitalist economy, ideas need to become products that are sold in order to be recognized as "part of" the economy and society as a whole This is just anti-societal drivel. Linux became huge by providing a highly technical and powerful solution at a time when ones was needed for the explosion of internet activity. Windows wasn't secure enough for a large site with a big target on its forehead and other solutions were too expensive compared to the small increases in functionality they provided. In other words, Linux is taken seriously as a product and an idea because it was the best tool for the job of web serving.

    But don't let the facts keep you from voicing more opinions.
  7. Re:Can't have it both ways by TheModelEskimo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the big players who can leverage lots of applications without paying for all of the developers

    Isn't that exact statement also true for the small players? In the mostly-proprietary days it was, "the big players can afford to leverage lots of applications because they can pay for the developers..." and now both sides have the benefit.
  8. Re:As opposed to closed commercial software... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Uh what? If I write a peice of software and release it under a closed licence then the only way Microsoft or IBM can beat me is by developing their own competing software. A company like Microsoft has an advantage of course in that if they make their software roughly as good as mine then they can probably beat me by tying it in with Windows and crush me with market dominance. But they still have to put the work into developing their own software in the first place.

    Contrast that with using most open source licences like GPLv2, where Red Hat could just take my code and slap it in their OS, taking the profit for themselves without writing a line of code.

  9. Re:Can't have it both ways by bhmit1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the big players who can leverage lots of applications without paying for all of the developers
    Isn't that exact statement also true for the small players? In the mostly-proprietary days it was, "the big players can afford to leverage lots of applications because they can pay for the developers..." and now both sides have the benefit.
    Both sides "can" benefit, but the old saying "nobody ever got fired for picking <insert big player here>" still applies. Sure, there are exceptions, especially when you look at small and local companies, or need some custom development. But on average, given the choice between a large organization and a small organization, people tend to pick the bigger one because they have the sales team, name recognition, and frequently the ability to be a one stop shop. With open source, now instead of the big companies licensing software from all the small developers, they simply repackage it.

    My favorite line on company business models is that "IBM is not a software company, they are a sales company". Very little of what they sell was written by them. When it makes sense, they buy a company or license their software. And when possible, they are happy to open up their patents and back the open source developers that will create their next product for free.
  10. XEN not suitable for end-users by Maljin+Jolt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I tried all of XEN, VMWare, KVM and VirtualBox on AMD X2 5000+ Linux, eh... GNU/Linux host, with a dozens of different guests platforms running in it. And I found XEN the least suitable for desktop end users for technical reasons, with VirtualBox the best and friendliest at the same time. On servers maybe XEN could catch but it is still a technical nightmare.

    At the moment, not many users have good hardware for virtualisation but that will change in 2008 and I give XEN not so much chances to get major market slice.

    --
    There you are, staring at me again.