Just saw this on the newswires:
Sun Microsystems Inc. ( 16.94, +0.13, +0.7%) said Tuesday it would acquire innotek, a privately held developer of open source virtualization software. Innotek specializes in a product called VirtualBox that allows software developers to build, test and run open source applications on different software platforms. Financial terms for the all-stock deal weren't disclosed. Sun said it expects the deal to close during its third fiscal quarter. End of Story
Interesting.... maybe more resources will be brought to VBox.
Can this at least bring some hope for Java on OS/2? One can only hope.
cytan
Also, the IFE? Also the Innowin runtime? Initial impression gives me a good feeling about this.
Honestly I doubt that this announcement will result Java for OS/2, IFE, or any of the others to be updated. Simply because none of these have been updated in quite some time, and the main interest that Sun seems to have is in Virtualbox. Sun has never really done any os/2 development.
I also find myself reminded of the press release / effort from a year or two ago on behalf of Sun to say to OS/2 users "Switch to our OS".
But I guess it is a wait and see.
How about at least open the source to the IFE and runtime? Maybe OS/2 World could petition for that?
^ Worthwhile cause IMO. What does everyone think?
Oh... and while we're at it... the Flash wrapper too....
I don't know how these big guys are thinking, but I guess it would have a greater impact if Serenity could talk to them. They could at least claim they have "that many" users and "that many" corporative users and so on.
Hi folks,
although I'ld love to see some kind of benefit to us in what is happening with Innotek and Sun, I must somehow lower your expectations, I'm afraid. The last time when "a virtualization stuff was bought/sold", the buyer (a Redmond-based company BTW) decided to break the product in pieces, wash out the parts, reassemble them under the new name of "VirtualPC" and managed to kill everything in it that was related to OS/2. More or less.
Now, we're talking about business, the big money.
The only reason for Sun to buy this is to gain market penetration vs. Microsoft (VPC) and VMWare or whatever. They give a s**t on OS/2, what counts is the Win/Linux/Mac part in VirtualBox (although on their site they explicitly name OS/2 in the list of guest OS in the announcement details).
And as each "supported" OS requires at least some minor part of manpower to get it supported/regression tested or even mentioned on websites and readmes, this mean COST. Cost is not a bad thing, as long as it is seen as an investment (thus "Cost" vs. "Benefit"). Now how much "benefit" (not even talking about money) would it bring Sun to support OS/2 and eComStation? Don't be romantic and think about it again - how much? Aha. Compare that to the cost. Aha. Got it?
Better expect Sun to drop "official" OS/2 support.
On the other hand - it's open source.
The community is free to participate -yawn- in ongoing (sigh) support of OS/2 and eCS in VitualBox.
(Which means something like "both of the remaining 2 developers that really know what's going on and who have an active interest in eCS..." - I'ld love to be contradicted however...)
And please:
If news will pop up in the next couple of months abouot what was enhanced for eCS and OS/2 don't get back on me to tell "So you see Thomas!! You were wrong - they still support us!". Just wait for another 6 months then. This is when the delivery pipeline from the current state of Innotek has dried out.
The really intersting thing is the commercial and license details about the "other stuff" from Innotek. I'ld cut my finger to get a sneak view at the contracts - what does Sun exactly buy? The whole company? What happens to the intellectual property of Innotek with the products that Sun hasn't got its focus on? Can Innotek release them to the community "before" the sellout? Will Sun try to get rid of it ASAP by releasing it? Do they prefer NOT to disclose but simply erase that stuff? Because: Who knows - who can tell if Microsoft, Adobe, whoever might find suspicious "code parts" in the IFE regarding TrueType support... you might say "they didn't do it until now" but, hey, things have changed: Now a "big fish" can be sued.
Finally, one thing I'ld like to say is that I'm very happy for Innotek as a company and for the poeple who make their living from working for that company. Not only does this deal show how much "appreciation" they get for their efforts with VirtualBox, but it also promises to give some kind of security for the future of Innotek as a company.
...unless someone from Sun comes up with a plan on how to save on cost... but that'll be happening not sooner than 2009.
Greetz,
Thomas
VPC runs OS/2 as a guest quite perfectly, also with guest additions for shared mouse/folders, etc. Im not sure what version you used?
Hi,
as I said they've removed OS/2 support "more or less". ;-)
Indeed VPC runs OnE (OS/2 'n' eComStation) as guest OS... and although MS officially lists OS/2 as supported guest (shouldn't they include a copyright notice to IBM somewhere BTW?) they did however actively drop the support of OS/2 as the *host* platform (compared to what VPC was before it became VPC... refer to "Connectix").
Although I must admit that -if memory serves- OS/2 host support wasn't done by Connectix themselves... but who cares: It no longer is in there.
Let me put it that way: In my mind they (MS) have weighted efforts against benefits on removing ALL OS/2 support from it in the beginning... but then they realized that people who run OS/2 as a guest somehow have to buy a license for the supported HOSt platform (=MS OS)... so why should they care?
( Perhaps they even faced that at that stage, they were lacking skills to understand the superior technology :P of that virtualization software to be able to remove OS/2 guest support?... )
OS/2 support in VPC is basically a legacy that stays in because it's technically not impossible to do so.
;-)
Regards,
Thomas
Hm.. I had never considered that aspect of it, I simply like VPC because its A) free to me and B) one of the few free VM solutions that currently supports OS/2 guests perfectly. VMWare has given me significant issues, as well as VirtualBox. I have never messed with Qemu however.
In any case, do you think Sun will kill these Innotek projects or maybe just offer them up as abandonware? Would there be any IP or other issues with that?
Hi,
hmmm... tough question.
Basically I'ld say that if there were no IP infringements happening so far, why should there be now? As to the future of the "other" stuff from Innotek (what about the libc.-stuff BTW?) I haven't got the faintest idea... it depends on:
- if Sun has bought all the rights for everything from Innotek
- if/how the stuff was (L)GPL'ed already before (they can't turn that back, can they?)
- if something is/was Innotek very own IP (instead of ports / contribs)
Depending on all this, we might expect different stages of:
- extinction (no public distribution anymore, no support)
- abandonware (D/L available, no source, no support)
- public+proprietary release a la StarOffice / OpenOffice
- release to the wild with no further support from Sun (what license model?)
In the absence of any details on the contract, everything is possible...
Personally I think that the "cheapest" way for Sun is to release everything they don't need/fear to the community with keeping the licenses already in place or making them (L)GPL (or similar if source-distro).
This way, they won't have to mess with petitions, IP lawsuits, or setting up complicated EULAs on websites for people who download "Sun products".
Who knows? Perhaps they leave all this up to Innotek to take care of?! Would that be better?
(Given e.g. the unchanged status quo of the font engine for... ehh... quite some time.)
regards,
Thomas
Quote from: warpcafe on 2008.02.13, 17:33:56
Hi,
[...]
( Perhaps they even faced that at that stage, they were lacking skills to understand the superior technology :P of that virtualization software to be able to remove OS/2 guest support?... )
OS/2 support in VPC is basically a legacy that stays in because it's technically not impossible to do so.
;-)
Regards,
Thomas
On a side note, I do not think they could even understand the OS/2 itself. Take for instance the so called Virtual PC Guy's blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/11/15/258025.aspx) assertions:
- OS/2 2.11 does not "support the IDE CDROM used by Virtual PC." He had to recur to "a cool trick" to make the CDROM be recognized under OS/2's DOS VM.
- He had to keep the memory size "low" at 16MB and the hard disk at 50MB.
Notwithstanding, OS/2 2.11 does support *natively* VirtualPC's CDROM, has been assigned 64MB of RAM and a 500MB virtual hard disk in the images that I used to illustrate the youTube-dl on OS/2 blog post (http://www.metztli-it.com/blog/index.php?blog=4&cat=18&paged=3).
Currently the OS/2 2.11 screen shots are absent from the (2004) MS core virtualization team "OS/2 Guru's" original blog post. When those screen shots existed and the user selected any, those were 640x400 --that is, the application of the S3 video driver was required for higher resolutions (VirtualPC emulates the S3 Trio 32/64). Yet noticing the OS/2-specific technical deficiencies revealed by the MS "OS/2 guru," applying a video driver might have been beyond his abilities (now that is tricky, indeed ;) ).
...oh, and OS/2 2.0 is the earliest that actually executes under VirtualPC --the update to 2.11 is necessary for more stability and possibly for other than 640x400 resolutions.
I thought everything Innotek was going to do on OS/2 was already done two years ago. All the technology that is going to be has already been transferred to Serenity and Netlabs. Some of the people at Innotek continue to help the OS/2 community, and I hope this deal makes them rich.
I hope they continue to support efforts for Paul Smedley and others to finish the port of Virtual Box.
The only thing I could think of would be to ask Sun for a release of Java 1.5 that Innotek had completed (or at least they announced nearly completed at WS 2004) but never found a buyer for.
How about asking Sun MicroSystems to release to the OS/2 Community the Source-Codes that they developed while they were working jointly with IBM to develop the Java-OS/2 Operating System (which was later discontinued) as this may convince IBM to release their Source-Codes for the Java-OS also. ;)