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VirtualBox 5.1 Beta Released, Qt5 Porting & Better Python 3 Support

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  • VirtualBox 5.1 Beta Released, Qt5 Porting & Better Python 3 Support

    Phoronix: VirtualBox 5.1 Beta Released, Qt5 Porting & Better Python 3 Support

    Oracle's VM VirtualBox team has been working on VirtualBox 5.1 as a minor update to this cross-platform virtualization software...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    It moving from Qt4 to Qt5 also makes it one step closer to running on Wayland.

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    • #3
      Huge fan of VirtualBox. Virtualization is just so convenient when using VirtualBox. Great to see Qt5 migration, a step in the right direction!

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      • #4
        Why hasn't VirtualBox been forked like the rest of Sun's really awesome stuff? Having Oracle in charge of this project makes me very nervous.

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        • #5
          Qt5 Porting & Better Python 3 Support
          Very strange highlights for VM software, to say the least...

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          • #6
            Originally posted by k1e0x View Post
            Why hasn't VirtualBox been forked like the rest of Sun's really awesome stuff? Having Oracle in charge of this project makes me very nervous.

            First, a small but still significant shenigan around license:

            Because VirtualBox it self wasn't started by Sun themselves, but by a start-up called Innotek in Germany.
            When they accepted to opensource VirtualBox, they decided to use GPLv2 (aka the "Viral License")

            From its own youth VirtualBox has nearly always been a project completely with the Free/Libre mentality.

            Sun only bought them at a later point in time. By then the code was already out there available under GPL.
            Of course they could also license the parts that they own under any of their license (like CDDL), but that won't make suddenly the GPL copies out in the wild stop to exist.

            As such, there's only limited amount of shit that Sun and later Oracle can put on it.

            Compare the situation with OpenOffice.org, which was first bought as a commercial office suite StarOffice and only subsequently released by Sun themselves under dual licensing SISSL (not GPL compatible, as usual with anything done by Sun) and LGPL (the "allowed to mix it with closed source" license, normally used for opensource libraries callable from prorietary software) which opens more creative possibility for Oracle to fuck things up.

            As such OpenOffice is more typical of the Corporate OpenSource movement (we'll show you the code because it seems to be the latest cool trend to do so, but we'll remain in control of it).


            Second, let's not forget the main reason of the Open2Libre fork: governance.

            Sun promised that OpenOffice will be developped as part of an open and egalitarian neutral foundation.
            That didn't come to happens during their time.
            Instead development of OpenOffice was quite closed (and behind those doors, it was happening at a sluggish rate), with organisation like Novell needing to maintain their own collection of patches and fixes outside the main official tree (so at that time the project was also in a not quite but almost forked state).

            (exactly what one could expect from a project born out of the corporate "opensource" movement).

            Then cue in the lawsuit-happy Oracle (see Google regarding Java) which seemed even more hostile toward opensource code, and the chance of the "neutral foundation" materializing seemed bleak.

            From that point, it wasn't that much work to go all they way through and finish forking the project and founding the Open Documen Foundation.


            The situation is different with VirtualBox :
            the developpement is very active (see the migration from Qt4 to Qt5), and done by a quite small team who are specialised in the complex task of virtualisation, and who seem to fully understand the Free/Libre culture.
            (And not show only the code because it's trendy).

            Thus nobody is complaining about the current developement model around it.
            There isn't a huge treasure trove of patch that must be separately maintained because the developper aren't eager to incorporate it into the official build.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by DrYak View Post


              First, a small but still significant shenigan around license:

              --snip--

              Thus nobody is complaining about the current developement model around it.
              There isn't a huge treasure trove of patch that must be separately maintained because the developper aren't eager to incorporate it into the official build.

              As I understand this https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Contributor_information

              Even though its GPL (or GPL/MIT?) Oracle maintains the rights to re-licence it?

              Keep in mind this is how Oracle closed the source on Solaris (OpenSolaris under the CDDL followed Solaris releases, but Sun owned the copyright on OpenSolaris) and is responsible for the need to fork, hence Illumos was born with the new contributed copyright's owned by the developers who wrote it. In Oracle's case, they just stopped releasing the newer code. If Oracle wants to use Illumos features and code in Solaris they will then need to release the code for their version Solaris under the CDDL.

              The CDDL is a pretty good licence (based on MPL-1) and REQUIRES that if Oracle ships code in binary form under the CDDL that they release the source of that code.

              "3.1 Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License"

              Their way around that was by reserving the right to change the licence. I don't know how this applies exactly to VirtualBox but Oracle's track record makes me very uneasy. With what they did to OpenSolaris they are NOT a company you want in charge of ANY open source project.
              Last edited by k1e0x; 04 June 2016, 12:07 AM.

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              • #8
                Great news. On a side note, what is the state of the 3D support in Virtualbox? I am a heavy user of CADs under Windows and this is the only reason I am using Vmware. I like Virtualbox in every other respect. It would be great if Virtualbox had working support for Direct3D 9. Someone has more info?

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                • #9
                  Oracle is doing a great job with virtual box.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by k1e0x View Post
                    Why hasn't VirtualBox been forked like the rest of Sun's really awesome stuff? Having Oracle in charge of this project makes me very nervous.
                    The real answer basically boils down to: There hasn't been an incentive to do so yet.

                    LibreOffice and Mariadb are the only true forks of Sun's code as opposed to continuations of already public code, and LibreOffice was a continuation of Go-oo while Mariadb was a fork caused by governance issues. OpenZFS and OpenIndiana/Illumos/etc... were continuations of the OpenSolaris code after Oracle shut it down, and the rest of Sun's stuff remains under Oracle.

                    Ultimately however Oracle doesn't really have a reason to close off VirtualBox as it's a consumer virtualization solution as opposed to an enterprise one, and even if they did either the community would fork or they'd move off to KVM

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