vmware's new contest to build a virtual appliance

[mouser]

Are you up for the challenge of creating the industry’s most innovative virtual appliance? VMware invites you to put your skills to the test, go head-to-head with your peers, and develop the best virtual appliance the industry has ever seen. Using open source or freely distributable components and/or your own code, create the most inventive and useful virtual appliance and win the $100,000 first prize! The Challenge is open to anyone worldwide and will be judged by a panel of industry experts with input from the community.,

http://www.vmware.co...ppliances/challenge/

[link from slashdot.org]


ps.
the concept of a virtual appliance is a bit confusing - basically the vmware player program let's you share a complete copy of an operating system and the programs on it and distribute it.  so basically the contest is to take a freely distributable operationg system (like linux) and write some software for it, and then use vmware player to make a standalone (big) file that people can download to use.

so as an example, you might make a vmware player that has linux and a web browser installed and preconfigured to launch on boot and display the donationcoder.com homepage.  now you have made a "virtual appliance" whose sole purpose is to safely surf to the dc site, and is only 300mb big.  not sure if this would win the prize..

[housetier]

Shortly before reading this:

so as an example, you might make a vmware player that has linux and a web browser installed and preconfigured to launch on boot and display the donationcoder.com homepage.  now you have made a "virtual appliance" whose sole purpose is to safely surf to the dc site, and is only 300mb big.  not sure if this would win the prize..

-mouser (February 28, 2006, 09:52 AM)

I saw this at vmware.com:

Virtual Appliance

The Browser Appliance allows users to securely browse the Internet using Mozilla Firefox. Run the Browser Appliance with VMware Player to:

• Protect Against Adware and Spyware: Users protect their PCs against adware, spyware and other malware while browsing the Internet with Firefox in a virtual machine. The Browser Appliance leverages virtual machine isolation capabilities to prevent malware downloaded in the browser from propagating to the normal desktop.
• Safeguard Personal Information: The Browser Appliance can be configured to automatically reset itself after each use so personal information is never stored permanently.

It would seem this idea was rather popular. I stumbeled upon it in this Groklaw story, more precisely in this comment.