Open Virtual Machine Tools

[PhilB66]

vmware starts an open source Virtual Machine Tools project.

Sourceforge Link

[nite_monkey]

Thats cool, vmware is going open source.

[mwb1100]

Just to clarify - VMware is not open sourcing their core VM technology - they're open sourcing the tools that run in the VM that allow better integration with the host machine - access to the host file system and devices:

The following components have been released as OSS:

    * Drivers for devices and filesystems access
    * Memory ballooning
    * Shared folders
    * Drag and Drop, Text and File Copy/Paste
    * Clipboard sharing
    * Disk wiping and shrinking
    * Time synchronization
    * Automatic guest screen resolution resizing
    * GuestInfo (provides statistics about guest environment)
    * Guest SDK (provides information about the VM)
    * Soft power operations
    * Multiple monitor support
    * GTK Toolbox UI

[f0dder]

Wow, that's pretty interesting!

So, will we be able to easily upgrade/replace those parts in a normal VMWare distro?

[mwb1100]

So, will we be able to easily upgrade/replace those parts in a normal VMWare distro?

I think so.  However, the tools they've open sourced are for the Linux/Unix guest OS.  They did not open source the Windows versions of the tools.

I'm not sure how easy it will be to take the tools they opened and port them to support Windows guest VMs.  I'm sure it's possible, I just don't know how easy or if anyone wants to work on that.

The really interesting potential here is if other VM vendors (XenSource/Citrix, Parallels, and MS) pick up on this and  add support to the tools to have them work on various VM platforms.  I think there's a reasonable chance of this, except for MS.