rbw wrote:
Todd Walton wrote:
Apparently, the world is ending, bit by open source bit.
Although I think this is a Very Bad Thing(tm), Red Hat will fork the
project and we'll still have something Xen-like to use.
If you'll notice, Citrix released Xen 4 this Monday. Also notice that
there is no opensource Xen 4 -- the first thing Citrix did is close the
source (probably by changing the license). Bastards. They're
(undoubtedly) going to destroy the product and make it inherently
windows-specific. Yay for getting into bed with Microsoft!
Citrix Enters Datacenter and Desktop Virtualization Markets with
Acquisition of XenSource:
http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_680809.asp?ntref=hp_promo1_US
I got a sinking feeling in my stomach when I read that.
"Intel continues to be committed to participating in the Linux and Xen
communities to drive Linux virtualization forward," said Rammohan
Peddibhotla, director of the Open Source Technology Center at Intel.
"Given the open source nature of these communities, we’re not expecting
changes at the project level."
Of course it's good for Intel. Intel doesn't care who buys their
hardware, as long as people buy it. Xen development will continue under
another name, forked by someone else (most likely Red Hat).
AMD was also positive. Margaret Lewis, director of commercial solutions
at AMD, noted that the acquisition is a reflection of how exciting the
virtualization space is today. That said Lewis does not expect it to
change AMD's involvement or participation in the Xen open source effort.
The same goes for AMD.
"We need to see how customers respond but we don't think it will dull
the open source effort, " Lewis said.
Response? Overwhelmingly pissed-off. Of course, I'm not in the payware
crowd, so I'm probably not a representative customer base.
For Novell the acquisition of XenSource isn't expected to affect it at
all. Novell uses the Xen open source hypervisor in its SUSE Linux
Enterprise and OpenSUSE Linux distributions.
As do red hat, fedora, et al. Hence why it will be forked.
"It will have no impact. The Xen project is not XenSource, nor vice
versa," Novell spokesperson Kevan Barney said. "The effect on Novell is
the same as if someone bought Red Hat; that's the beauty of open source."
Don't believe that for a second. XenSource was (and presumably still is,
albeit under Citrix direction) the primary developer for Xen as we know
it today.
Although open-source development will continue, the projects will most
certainly diverge. In a small amount of time, Citrix Xen won't resemble
opensource Xen at all.
*sigh* it's things like this that make me want to get out of this field
altogether. Next thing you know, Microsoft will buy Novell (shit will
hit the fan).
-kelsey
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
